Feds Offer Air Fare Travel Tips
The federal government produces all sorts of travel-tip brochures, and now the Transportation Department has published one called “Getting the Best Air Fare.”
Among the tips the department offers for obtaining good fares:
Be flexible in your plans in order to get the lowest price; flying a day or two later could save you considerable money.
Plan as far ahead as you can; the best bargains always sell out quickly.
Check on the feasibility of alternative routings or airports; a one-stop flight can cost less than a nonstop flight.
The sheet is available by writing the department’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division (C-75), 400 Seventh St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20590; by leaving a message at 202-366-2220; or by going to Web site www.dot.gov/ost/ogc
The department also has just issued its second report on airfares, which compares average fares between 1,000 city pairs in the United States for the fourth quarter of 1996. That report can be obtained at Web site www.dot.gov/ost/aviation
Lowball Frommer: Budget guru Arthur Frommer is launching a consumer-oriented magazine targeting a surprisingly untapped niche in the $467 billion travel industry - those trying to vacation on a shoestring.
Why now, after 40 years as the author of close to 200 guidebooks on low-cost travel?
“One impetus,” he said, “is that the standard travel magazines have become almost aggressively elitist. Everything to them is a value even if it’s unaffordable to the vast majority of the U.S. population.” The operative word for Frommer deals, he added, will be “cheap.”
The premier issue of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel Magazine, subtitled Vacations for Real People is due out Jan. 5, and will feature best bargains in everything from health spas to house swaps. One article is titled “Las Vegas on $0 a Day (Well, almost …).” There will be four general issues annually and two with special themes. A subscription is $14.95; single copies are $3.95. Frommer also publishes a daily online magazine at his Web site: http://frommers.com
Say what?: From time to time, we report on cruise-ship passengers’ strange questions (“What time is the midnight buffet?” Does the crew sleep on board?”). Here are some more, which the people at Celebrity Cruises insist have been asked:
“Why does the ship rock only when we are at sea?”
“Will I get wet if I go snorkeling?”
“What do you do with the ice carvings after they melt?”
“Is there water all around the island?”
“Will the trapshooting be held outside?”
“How will we know which photos (of passengers taken by the ship photographers) are ours?”
Internet kiosks: Travelers soon will be able to confirm hotel reservations, reserve entertainment tickets, check their stocks, surf the Web and send and read e-mail while waiting for flights at New York’s La Guardia and John F. Kennedy airports and New Jersey’s Newark airport.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to install more than 100 Internet kiosks in departure areas as well as in selected arrival areas.
Top 25: Here are Travel & Leisure readers’ picks for the planet’s top 25 cities, published among other World’s Bests in the magazine’s September issue: Sydney, Florence, Rome, San Francisco, Melbourne, Venice, Paris, Vienna, Christchurch (New Zealand), Cape Town, Queenstown (New Zealand), New Orleans, London, Jerusalem, Vancouver, Chicago, San Miguel de Allende (Mexico), Toronto, Salzburg, Boston, New York, Madrid, Mexico City, Charleston (S.C.) and Bangkok.
Bed in the sky: The next competitive battle in the international skies is going to be fought in the bedroom.
Virgin Atlantic, the quirky British carrier noted for such perks as massages in its Upper Class cabin, has ordered 16 new Airbus jumbo jets, to go into service in 2002, that will include private bedrooms with double beds for its highest-fare passengers.
The bedrooms will be on the lower deck, where cargo usually goes, beneath the seats at the front of the planes. The lower deck will also offer showers, an exercise area and a massage table.