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                             THE STANDARD'S
                        T E C H  T R A V E L E R
         Travel and the Travel Industry in the New Millennium
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                                        | http://www.thestandard.com |

Monday, January 29, 2001

NEWS BRIEFS:
* Saving the Galapagos ... Blue Skies in Texas? ... Fare Is Fair

TOP STORY:
* Surfing and WAVEs: Hawaii's Business Resorts Embrace High-Speed
Connectivity

SITE REVIEW:
* RealConditions.com

NEWS BRIEFS
~~~~~~~~~~~
RARE BREED: In response to the recent diesel spill in the Galapagos
Islands, adventure travel portal iExplore quickly registered the
domain "SavetheGalapagos.org" and launched an online campaign to aid
clean-up efforts in the islands. In addition to a plea for donations -
which iExplore will pass along to the nonprofit Charles Darwin
Foundation - the site offers an index of articles, multimedia and Web
resources related to the disaster.

HOTWIRE RAISES THE TEMPERATURE: Online travel discounter Hotwire
recently added a hotel-booking engine to its Web site, which had sold
only discounted air tickets since launching in October. The company
has inked deals with various hotel chains and some individual
properties to market rooms that are not likely to sell through other
channels, and it claims to offer discounts of 40 percent or more on
accommodations in 25 major U.S. cities. Additional destinations are
due to go online later this year.

LESS-CHOPPY AIR: Expedia, which holds its Q2 earnings conference call
today at 5 p.m. ET, has been in for a wild ride over the past week and
a half, beginning with a favorable bump on Wall Street in the wake of
a Jan. 18 "strong buy" recommendation from the financial services firm
Legg Mason. (Apparently optimistic about the future of online travel
sales, Legg Mason issued a simultaneous upgrade for Expedia archrival
Travelocity.com as well.) Next came the Jan. 22 rollout of a
well-received user-interface enhancement, which gives Expedia users
more control and flexibility when searching for flights and allows
travelers to build custom air/hotel packages online.

THE BLUEST SKIES IN TEXAS? Fort Worth, Texas-based Travelocity.com has
experienced its share of ups and downs lately, including an
embarrassing incident in which personal information about thousands of
entrants in online promotions was posted on a public Web server. A
formal statement about the security breach issued Jan. 23 reassured
members that no credit card information or personal profiles had been
exposed. The company might have been a little more excited to learn of
its year-end financial results. They showed that Travelocity doubled
its gross travel bookings between 1999 and 2000, reaching sales of
$2.5 billion and boosting membership by 50 percent. CFO Ramesh Punwani
projected, "With these results, we have updated our outlook and
believe we will be at or close to profitability by the end of the
second quarter of 2001, and profitable for the full year."

FARE IS FAIR: The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a
general advisory to airlines and travel retailers stating that all
airfare advertisements published online must state the full price to
be charged to the consumer. "The department recently examined fare
displays on a number of Web sites that mention that a so-called 'fuel
surcharge' will be assessed in addition to the stated fare," the
document says. "The failure to include these fees in the base price
violates the department's price-advertising rules and can prevent
consumers from making accurate fare comparisons when making purchasing
decisions." The advisory does not reflect any change in DOT
regulations, it merely serves as a reminder that Web-based promotions
must conform to the same rules that apply to other advertising media.

TOP STORY
~~~~~~~~~
Surfing and WAVEs: Hawaii's Business Resorts Embrace High-Speed
Connectivity

By Morris Dye

When a subsidiary of Japanese real estate and construction
conglomerate Kajima set out to build a 650-acre resort community on
the Big Island of Hawaii, the developers envisioned a conventional
holiday retreat where stressed-out executives and their families could
seek refuge from the complexities of modern life. But plans for the
Hualalai Resort complex took an unexpected turn after a California
consulting firm commissioned to study the target market found that for
today's wired workers, "getting away from it all" does not necessarily
mean disconnecting from the global information grid. The group, San
Francisco's Economics Research Associates, found that guests craved a
state-of-the-art telecommunications network with broadband Internet
access wired into every home and hotel room on the property.

Certainly the notion of a wired resort isn't new. But for Hawaii, long
a destination known more for its gargantuan waves than its WAVE files,
the transition is significant: It represents how a vacation spot's
amenities are increasingly shaped by its tech-savvy guests.

Examples around the state abound. The W Hotel at the Diamond Head end
of Waikiki, Oahu, offers two flavors of Internet access in all of its
48 guest rooms: data ports for Ethernet-ready laptops and
Internet-connected televisions equipped with wireless keyboards.
Despite what General Manager Ren Hirose says is a 3-to-1 ratio of
leisure to business travelers, demand for communications technology
has been high, and the hotel is planning to double the number of
executive-class rooms, which feature fax/scanner/printer/copy machines
along with standard Internet services.

At the other end of Waikiki, the Hilton Hawaiian Village is building a
new 25-story resort tower in which all 453 guest rooms will be wired
for Ethernet connectivity. Even the deliberately low-tech Kona Village
Resort on the Big Island - distinguished by a complete lack of
telephones, radios and televisions in its 125 seaside cottages - now
offers a telecommunications center with four computer data ports.

The contemporary wisdom is that many vacationing executives harbor at
least a desire for connected-ness (whether they actually log on is
another story). In a telephone survey of full-time workers with
household incomes of $75,000 or more, researchers from Andersen
Consulting, now Accenture, found that more than 80 percent of
respondents who took at least a week of vacation between April and
August remained in contact with their offices while traveling. Mobile
phones were by far the most popular means of checking in, but 16
percent of respondents said they carried laptop computers to check
their e-mail, and of those who checked, 83 percent responded to
work-related e-mail while on vacation.

Of course, easy access to the Internet could be considered a curse by
some. The October 2000 issue of Conde Nast Traveler quotes Scott
Rafer, co-founder of San Francisco-based Fresher Information,
commenting on his Y2K holiday on the north shore of Kauai. "The
happiest thing that happened was that I couldn't log on," he said. "I
was thrilled." But with Internet connections increasingly common at
resorts in Hawaii and other leisure destinations worldwide, avoiding
office e-mail while on vacation is fast becoming more a matter of
choice than necessity.

SITE REVIEW
~~~~~~~~~~~
RealConditions.com

Ski condition reports have been available on the Web for years, but
with few exceptions, most sites merely transmit data provided by the
resorts themselves, which have a strong financial interest in
convincing skiers to head for the slopes. The recent launch of
RealConditions.com owned by Gantzer Group, which also operates
snow-sportal SkiSite.com and PowderGram.com, aims to provide a more
democratic alternative. The idea is to publish a worldwide directory
of official resort reports along with unofficial eyewitness accounts
from unbiased contributors. Think of it as a real-time Zagat survey
for the schussing scene, with a clean, attractive interface, free
e-mail updates and wireless access for that WAP phone you keep tucked
in your parka. Unfortunately, the site is a little more powdery than
it should be. After searching through the listings for 15 minutes late
last week, we couldn't find a single skier report for popular downhill
areas in California and Colorado. Without some serious marketing to
build an active community of amateur evaluators, this site will have
trouble living up to its promise.

STAFF        
~~~~~
Written by Michael Shapiro and Morris Dye. Send e-mail to
techtrav@yahoo.com.
Editor: Steven Zeitchik (szeitchik@thestandard.com).
Deputy Editor: Michele Keller (mkeller@thestandard.com).

Copyright 2001 Standard Media International

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