subject: The Internet - Changing The Way People Travel [print this page] Years ago, planning for a trip or vacation took a significant amount of time. If you had several destinations in mind, you had to write to the Chamber of Commerce and request brochures and wait for them to come in the mail. Once they arrived, decisions needed to be made on where you where going, what hotel you were going to stay in and whether or not you were going to rent a car. All these decisions required many phone calls to gather information so you could get what you wanted and at a good price. It was a good idea to start this process months in advance to be sure you had everything you needed to make a good decision.
Or, you could pull out that big yellow book and find someone to do all the work for you. They are called travel agents and they do all the leg work for you, delivering a packet of information with tickets and itinerary right before you leave for your trip. Of course they don't do this for you out of the kindness of their hearts, there is a fee involved.
When did all of these practices change, when did people get the ability to make all of their own choices and to do this all on their own without any help? It was the internet of course. Without instant access to all of this information, nobody wanted to take the time to do these things themselves. And anyway, most people didn't know who to call to get the information. You could spend hours and days in a tangle of phone calls just to get a hotel room set up for the right time.
The internet may be evil, but it does do some things right. How convenient is it being able to look at all the hotel rooms available in a town or all the flights that will get you close to your destination or compare all the rental cars? It is very convenient and what's even better is that you can plan even more detailed events like dinner reservations and buy tickets for shows all online without even having to pick up the phone.
The internet has given you the capability to become your own travel agent by just booting up your computer, visiting a few websites and making a couple of decisions. By the end of the night, you will have e-mail confirmations, tickets and all the necessary information to enjoy your trip.
