Bee T r avel
The Internet - your travel guide
CHRISTINE HICKS- USTA Travel
Ihad a dream the other night. I was with a group of people, and dispensing travel information.

This is, believe it or not, NOT a recurring dream, reality being so much more like it. Anyway, I had in my hand a wad of coupons for places in the area - only they had all expired. I gave them out anyway, assuring friends and family they still contained valuable information - and then the alarm clock sounded.

As I pondered the deeper meaning of the dream - if, indeed, there is one - I remembered working at an agency downtown in the early '70s. My co-worker, Jeanette, and I, during a particularly slow week, decided to order new, updated brochures for every hotel. When I think of this, it occurs to me how idiotic a venture this truly was. (I hear the whisper of Bugs Bunny saying "What a maroon!") Even back in those dark ages, not every hotel had a brochure, and those that did would have rendered and more brochures than our tiny office had space for, not to mention the serious amount of time a project of this nature would consume. We got as far as "Anaheim," then business picked up, and that project lay dormant forever. In retrospect, had we been successful (in the larger scope), that information would have been valid for about 15 minutes, and something would have changed, and we'd have had (in an OCD kind of way) to start over.

Back then we had other hotel resources, subscription services. They varied in approach, and only one even came close to listing every hotel in the world. That was (is) the Hotel and Travel Index. Published (at the time) quarterly, it's ad-driven, though its listings weren't dependent (or therefore swayed) because of it. It's a fact-based, not descriptive, tome. It's got listings for even the smallest of lodgings in the nethermost regions of the globe. It's still published, annually now, at a subscription cost of $249 plus shipping and handling, an oeuvre several inches thick, decidedly weighty (think: pounds), and, while comprehensive (and packed with ads), it's still a sluggish snapshot in time. What's more, tour and cruise brochures arrive first (now) on the web, followed (weeks later) by mail. Be it hotels, hotel rooms, ships, ship cabins, or the destination itself, descriptive resources have morphed drastically. What once we waited for by mail, after months spent on the compiling shelf, is now captured more completely and currently. You can peer inside rooms and cabins before you commit. Equally valuable, I think, are unsolicited reviews by prior guests. These first hand accounts (filtered for grudges and what are often highly singular circumstances - like hurricanes, for example) provide anecdotal and recent information, like advice from a friend who's been there. And what can beat Google Earth for an on-the-spot look? Thirty years of advances serve the traveler of today well. No brochure, guide or book offers up-to-date information as well the internet. Don't leave home without it. No computer? Ask your kids - or your travel agent. (Christine Hicks-Usta has enjoyed more than 30 years of globetrotting as a member of the travel industry in various capacities. Direct questions to her at Bee Group Newspapers, P.O. Box 150, Buffalo, N.Y. 14231-0150.)