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SOME INTERESTING, NEW OR IMPROVED WEBSITES

Ed Perkins,
Perkins, Ed - On Travel
Posted 09/29/2008 at 4:00 pm EST

Say you'd like to reserve a room at a small family hotel in France, where you're pretty sure the owners don't speak English. Or you'd like to stay in environmentally friendly hotels? Or you'd appreciate a forecast of future transatlantic airfares? Those are just a few examples of the many new or improved online services that can make travel easier, more rewarding, or less expensive.

For an instant translation of a reservation inquiry -- or anything else -- log onto www.meglobe.com, enroll as a user, enter your message, and you can email the result to the hotel. Of course, it's also good for personal messages. I tried it out with French and German, the two foreign languages I know well enough to make such a test, and it seemed to pass easily. The site has a bunch of other functions, including social networking chats. Currently, Meglobe can handle Arab (Saudi), Chinese (two versions), Dutch, French (separate versions for France and Canada), German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The biggest drawback to Meglobe is a totally non-intuitive home page and a very weak set of user directions. The site is still in beta; presumably, the final interface will be a bit more user friendly. But it's already good enough to give it a try.

If you're the sort who drinks fair trade coffee and drives a hybrid car, you'll probably like Whole Travel's new site (www.wholetravel.com). Its "blue sky search" function offers a searchable database of more than 4,000 hotels, worldwide, that practice environmentally and socially "green" policies. All listed hotels are "sustainable." You can screen the database for specific requirements, such as Internet access or a swimming pool. You can also enter general ideas of your interests, which the site will use to make destination and activity suggestions. Moreover, it provides links that allow you to book air tickets, guides, and other travel services. And it will ultimately post reviews from individual travelers. Whole Travel just launched earlier this week, so it's still in its infancy. Presumably, the folks there will continue to add content and functionality.

An earlier column covered Factory Tours USA (www.factorytoursusa.com), a site that lists a wide range of factory tours throughout the United States. I noted that the listing was weak in several areas, notably including wineries. Shortly after publication, I got an email from the couple that maintains the site, explaining that they're both retired and unable to keep up with a high volume of entries. Most importantly, they invited individual travelers to submit missing winery tour information -- and, presumably, any other omissions. If you know something and have a few minutes to spare, by all means contribute to this worthwhile effort.

When you're trying to sort out all the hotel options in a city you plan to visit, words in a guidebook may help -- but they can't compare with actual pictures of individual hotels and their rooms. Tvtrip.com can supply that need: Its database contains information and photos of 33,375 hotels in 7,797 destinations, with 8,727 videos. You can narrow your search by price range, number of "stars," style, individual amenities and features, and whether the location is near a subway. You can also reserve through links to two or more booking sites, including, at a minimum, booking.com and expedia.com.

Earlier this year Farecast (www.farecast.com) -- the online site that forecasts future airfares -- added several major European destinations to its system. I've written before about its domestic coverage; now it covers Amsterdam, Aruba, Bermuda, Cancun, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Paris, Puerto Vallarta, Rome, Santo Domingo, and Toronto. You enter your origin and destination cities and dates; the site then displays the best fares available, as of the previous days, the fares for each day over the following 30 days, and a chart showing the length of stay that offers the lowest fares. Each current fare quotation includes an indication of whether fares are heading up or down.

(Direct all MAIL for Cal Thomas to: Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, N.Y. 14207. Readers may also e-mail Cal Thomas at tmseditors@tribune.com.


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