Time to meet? Sites help get e-daters from here to e-ternity

IF an artist painted a portrait of Cupid today, the little guy’s quiver would surely hold websites instead of arrows.

In a survey by the Wedding Channel of 4,700 newly engaged or married people who registered on its website, 12% said they found their true love online. Dating websites such as Match.com and Great Expectations and personal-ad sites such as Yahoo! Personals, Gay.com and others have been responsible in just a decade of existence for a sea change in how people find romance.

“The Internet has completely changed how people meet and connect with one another,” said Kristin Kelly, a spokeswoman for Match.com. It was among the first and now is one of the most popular dating websites with 8 million profiles and 15 million members. “Even a generation or two ago, your social circle was really limited and constrained by time and space.”

As that social circle has been set free by the unlimited boundaries of cyberspace, would-be lovers may find themselves in a long-distance relationship, chatting with someone in another city, state or even country. Take the case of Patrick and Amy Daley, 29 and 28, respectively, of Greenville, Wis.

They met on Match.com in March 2004. He was in Wisconsin, she in Walnut Creek, Calif. After a monthlong courtship by phone, they decided they wanted to take their relationship to the next level and meet in person.

“We got to where we were talking on the phone eight hours a day,” Amy told me by phone. “I flew out and spent a weekend here with him.”

They considered meeting in a third-party city such as Cincinnati, to avoid the stress of being in the other person’s hometown. But they felt they knew each other well enough at that point for her to fly out to meet him in Wisconsin.

For others who meet online and want to meet in a neutral city to get acquainted, last-minute travel website Site59 in October launched a feature called “Meet Me In ...” that facilitates exactly that. Travelocity is planning to roll out “Meet Me In ...” on its website by the end of March.

“One of the market segments we believed would find value in this is the long-distance romance,” said Jeff Varhol, general manager of Site59.

I put the feature to a test, imagining I wanted to plan a trip to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to meet my hypothetical honey from Denver for a long romantic weekend. The feature is simple enough to use. On the site59.com homepage, there is a tab to click for one departure city or two, with “Meet Me In ...” part of the latter choice. Because Site59 specializes in last-minute packages (14 or fewer days in advance), I selected dates on a Wednesday for the coming weekend. I was presented with 15 packages for one room over three nights plus airfare with prices from a low of $601 for a stay for me and my Denver date at the Frontier on the Strip, to a high of $1,277 at Caesars Palace. Packages with two rooms are also available.

After I selected the Caesars Palace package (I don’t want the prospective love of my life to think that I’m cheap), Site59 searched for plane tickets. The algorithm that selects the flights aims to minimize travel time and also have you both arrive at and depart from the destination airport at around the same time, Varhol said. I was presented with a flight from LAX that got me into Vegas 11 minutes before my Denver dreamboat. Our flights departed within 1 1/2 hours of each other, though a second option reduced that to a 20-minute difference.

What’s really romantically sweet is that Site59 calculates how long you will be together. With the first of five itineraries shown, my Denver doll and I would share a glorious three days, 12 hours and 14 minutes.

Of course, the functionality of the feature is not limited to long-distance romantics. As many as four people can make reservations together, so, for example, friends and relatives can use it to book trips together to family or class reunions, or just for a weekend getaway.

Not all traveling romantics will have a date this Valentine’s Day, however. For those hoping to maybe spark some romance while in the air, there is a website called Airtroductions.com (www.airtroductions.com).

It is the brainstorm of New York public relations executive Peter Shankman, 33, who came up with the idea when he found himself on a flight from Houston to New York seated, quite by accident, next to Miss Texas 2002.

“It was a four-hour flight that took five seconds,” said Shankman, who flies about 150,000 miles a year.

It occurred to him that if you could figure out a way to sit next to someone with whom you shared something in common, you could reduce the stress of sitting for hours on a flight next to a complete stranger.

Airtroductions.com, which launched in September, was his solution. The site allows travelers to register their personal and flight information and make themselves available to sit next to someone who may happen to have like interests. Registration is free, but to contact someone on the site by e-mail costs $5. And though romance may be at the backs of people’s minds, the site is really more about having someone interesting in the next seat, Shankman said. If romance flowers, that is a side benefit.

“If we happen to have incredible chemistry, all the better,” he said. “If we wind up getting married and having 10 kids, fantastic, but the site wasn’t built for that.”

Though the site has made only about 50 matches so far, its membership is 4,100 and growing. Shankman foresees a day when it will be as easy to find a seatmate online as it is a seat. Until then, we might still have to lean on old Cupid.

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James Gilden writes the Daily Traveler blog at latimes.com/dailytraveler.