Have Web, Will Travel

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The Road Warrior knows: business travel always involves three variables -- time, money, and aggravation. Of the three, aggravation is always the most, well, aggravating. Take the experience of Amit Mazumdar, director of PC business at General Magic: "I told my travel agent that I wanted to stay at a hotel fairly close to London's Heathrow. It turned out to be on the perimeter of the airport. Short of wearing earplugs, I heard every flight take off and land all night."

The fact is, when it comes to the business of business travel only you know what kind of food you're craving, what kind of car you're secretly dying to rent, what one-of-a-kind artifact you'd like to bring home as a souvenir. And now, with the Web, you've got all the detailed travel information you could possibly want -- at your fingertips. Does that mean you're going to book flights, hotels, and cars online? You can, but going online to search for the best deal is still a bottomless time sink. Despite the hype from computer pundits, fewer than 1% of business people are using the Web to make reservations. Weren't travel agents invented for that stuff? The Web, however, can give you more control over your business travel arrangements.

"My itinerary changes so frequently that my travel agent is still crucial to me, says Greg McHale, president of the business products division at MicroTouch Systems. I don't usually book online but I always surf the Web before I call my agent. That way, I can get a sense of where I'm going, how I'm going to get there, and what I'll do when I arrive."

In this edition of @work, we've gathered leading-edge advice from three Road Warriors to help you travel the Web before you travel the world. Whether your business takes you to the farthest reaches of the globe or simply on a series of hops, skips, and junkets, these are the sites and tools you'll need to take control of your own itinerary. After all, the whole point is to get there faster, cheaper -- and with less aggravation.

Destination: Domestic

Road Warrior Amit Mazumdar, TK, director of PC business at General Magic, a software-development company based in Sunnyvale, California

Travel Log: 50,000 miles per year

Travel Schedule: One week per month

Regular Destinations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York

Hardware: IBM ThinkPad 760CD with an internal modem

Online Connection: Internal provider TK.

Before Packing: For getting information on hotels, I always check out Reed Traveler.Net (http://www.traveler.net). Its more detailed than the other travel sites. With a few clicks I can view a photograph of my room at the Omni Ambassador East in Chicago to see if it has a good-sized desk and a decent view. I can also get directions from O'Hare.

Favorite Web Site: I use BigBook (http: //www.bigbook.com), an online directory, to track down phone numbers and addresses. I was in Vienna, Virginia this past winter when the company I was calling on closed early because of a snowstorm. I needed to get the number of the guy I was meeting, but I didn't know the town he lived in so I couldn't find him through directory assistance. So I looked him up on the BigBook Web site. We had our meeting after all -- over the phone.

Tip: If you're doing a search on AltaVista, be specific. This past fall I was staying at the Marriott Copley in Boston for a convention. I had the weekend off, my family was with me, and we decided to head north to see the foliage. I did a search on New Hampshire Inns and pulled up a bunch of general Web sites. Then I narrowed it down by keying in "Lake Winnipesaukeean" -- an area where I wanted to stay. I found a place called the B. Mae's Inn of Suites that was perfect -- without scrolling through multiple layers of Web sites. The more specific your search, the less time it takes.

What to Avoid: If you need real-time flight and gate information, airline Web sites aren't always helpful. I wish every airline would emulate the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
(http://www.schiphol.nl/flights/home.htm), which continually updates arrival and departure times. My in-laws live in Holland, and when they fly out of Amsterdam to visit us I log on and check to see whether they left the airport on time. That way, I have a better idea of when I should leave to pick them up.

Coordinates: Amit Mazumdar, amit@genmagic.com