Tips and travel trends for the year ahead

Last weekend in San Antonio at a meeting of travel editors from across the country, I had the opportunity to listen as two of the nation's more vocal, consumer-oriented observers of the state of modern travel offered tips and waxed eloquent regarding trends they perceive emerging this year.

Tom Parsons is a man with a nose for sniffing out travel bargains. Over the last 15 years, Parsons has turned his almost evangelical enthusiasm for following the daily fluctuations of airline pricing into a significant publishing empire.

His Bestfares.com Web site is one of the top On-line sites for the latest travel intelligence. Analyzing millions of fresh air fares three times a day, Parsons' computers and people sleuth out the kind of short-term fare competitions between carriers and obscure travel promotions that help his converts stretch their travel dollars and earn every extra advantage.

"There are many real gems out there," he explained, "but consumers get so much information thrown at them all the time, it's hard to know what's good. The Internet is a great tool, but there's no regulation and lots of questionable information and bad deals On-line as well. Who can you trust?"

According to Parsons, the best air fare deals are no longer those that are booked 14 to 21 days in advance. Instead, he advises travelers contemplating a trip to get a benchmark idea of air fares to their destination as far in advance as they can, but not to jump at the first offer. It might also be wise to consider a trip to an alternative airport in the area. "The differences can be dramatic." With that information, the traveler can track the price of a ticket as it fluctuates. That way, they can recognize and respond as real bargains arise.

"Often the cheapest fares these days are announced at the last minute over the Internet, but not always." Parsons cites sales incentive programs offered by various merchandisers. A JC Penney promotion, for example, offers customers who buy $100 worth of luggage get a "Travel Discount Book" that includes a variety of coupons for up to $5,000 in savings on air fares, cruises, hotel rooms and rental cars.

The other speaker, Ed Perkins, retired last fall as editor of Consumer Reports travel letter after a long and distinguished career as an aviation industry watchdog. Now a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, Perkins' new mission to educate the public about steering clear of travel scams. He outlined what he thinks this year's top travel issues will be.

At the head of the list, he puts the soaring cost of hotel rooms. "It's easy to spend more on one night in a hotel than buying a round-trip plane ticket to get there, especially when local taxes are added in." He advises travelers to be as aggressive about sleuthing out savings on room rates as they are about air fares.

Travel scams are his second concern, but not just those perpetrated by fly-by-night operators. He particularly warned customers to be wary of "extra and hidden fees" that find their way onto the final bill of legitimate travel suppliers in addition to the advertised price. These include stiff port taxes by cruise ships, car rental additional driver fees, fuel surcharges by airlines, telephone price gouging by hotels and the doubling of charges on foreign currency transactions by credit card companies.

He's also closely watching developments within the airline industry itself. How will the other carriers respond to American Airlines' "Comfort Initiative" of removing several rows of seats from coach class and dividing the additional leg room evenly among the remaining passengers. After years of increasingly uncomfortable in-flight experiences, how much of a premium will coach passengers be willing to pay for a few extra inches of leg room? And will the new "T2" Web site under joint development by four major carriers fall under the scrutiny of government antitrust regulators?

Perkins predicts that the summer's big travel story, however, will be the rolling gridlock that is likely to plague airline operations around the country, as record airline traffic, jammed runways and an air traffic control system a decade overdue for an overhaul face the inevitable stormy weather.

With flight delays already increasingly common, even recently announced traffic control initiatives may not be enough to stem the tide, and that's enough to send everyone's temperature rising. After all, regardless of how much or how little money various passengers are willing to pay to get on a plane, they all arrive at the same time.

Have a happy Easter Sunday.