ON THE Fly, ON THE Net, ON THE Way

It was about noon one recent Wednesday when I sat down to chase a last-minute Internet travel trifecta. The idea was to test the new crop of discount sites aimed at last-minute travelers and to snag an air fare, hotel reservation and rental car on short notice but at a good price.

And what do I have to show for it? A bit of fading sunburn from hiking, swimming and poolside lounging beneath Arizona skies. A deeper acquaintance with the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright around Phoenix. A $551.51 hole in my credit-card account. And several new favorite Web sites . . . plus a few misgivings.

It’s easy to see why increasing numbers of travelers are relying on the Internet to book late-breaking trips. They can do their shopping at any hour wherever they have access to the Web, and they can comparison-shop with a few keystrokes.

The Internet can turn the economics of last-minute travel upside down. Until recently, airlines and hotels built their prices around the idea of rewarding good planners. Those traveling on impulse, on late-breaking business or in an emergency often paid dearly.

In the last couple of years, as Internet booking behemoths such as Travelocity and Expedia have matured, several smaller Internet companies have begun targeting last-minute travelers. (The Web addresses are listed at the end of this article.) Among the sites: LastMinuteTravel and Site 59, both launched earlier this year; 11thHourVacations, which launched last year; and Smarter Living, launched in 1998 without a booking engine but with an excellent air fare search setup. (For details on these and other last-minute sites, see L13.)

Sites like these are especially good for air fares, which involve fewer intangibles than hotel bookings do.

For example, when I called US Airways recently to buy an LAX-London ticket with six days’ notice, the operator came up with a price of more than $1,200. But if I had gone through LastMinuteTravel (a test I tried in late October), I could have landed the same ticket from the same airline for about $500.

Still, when it comes to sniffing out the particulars of a deal involving an unfamiliar hotel or rental car outlet, there’s no digital substitute for a few minutes of telephone follow-up.

Which brings me back to my misgivings. I did not suffer highway robbery on that weekend in Phoenix. It was, on the whole, a pleasant, reasonably priced 2 1/2 days. But my expenses crept up in annoying ways that were invisible on the Internet. Also, if I’d relied exclusively on the Internet, I’d never have learned how to whittle $30 more off my hotel bill--it took a travel agent to do that--or that my “on-airport” rental car wasn’t.

Using search engines, listening to colleagues’ opinions and studying travel sites that pop up on the “most used lists” compiled by companies that track such access, I began my quest.

To build a weekend: Like millions of U.S. tourists, I wanted a two- or three-day itinerary built around a weekend. I confined myself to mainland North American cities west of the Mississippi, and, traveling alone, I aimed for a combined hotel, air fare and rental car cost of less than $800. I avoided auction sites because many withhold details, and I wanted to know up front exactly when and where I could go.

My first hope was to find a combined package that would kill three birds (flight, hotel and car) with one electronic stone. By their names, which used phrases like “last-minute,” “11th hour” and “moment’s notice,” several sites seemed to be selling that idea.

The most enticing was Site 59, which specializes in themed weekend packages in U.S. and Canadian cities. I was ready to overlook the site’s subtle East Coast tilt (of the first 20 weekend destinations listed one day, five were west of the Mississippi), but the calendar got in the way. I wanted to stretch my weekend by adding a Monday, and among that week’s Site 59 inventory, most trips required return flights on Sunday.

Many other sites with procrastinator-friendly names were really just selling travel in general, and some had no last-minute offerings.

Another bother: Like many consumers, I prefer to browse prices without giving up personal information. Thanks to retail sites such as Amazon, which makes no such requirements, we know that registration before browsing really isn’t necessary. But many travel sites insist on registration before they’ll show you their prices. My first response was to reject them in favor of more open sites. But in some cases I did relent and sign on.

On and off between other office chores, I spent about seven hours on Wednesday (the day most major airlines post their weekly Internet special fares) and Thursday on research, bookings and post-booking research--far more shopping time than the average last-minute traveler hopes to spend. Media Metrix, a research firm that measures Web traffic, reports that among the 481,000 visitors to Smarter Living in September, the average time on the site was just 4.4 minutes per month. For LastMinuteTravel, with 238,000 visitors in September, Media Metrix found an average time online of 7.7 minutes for the month.

Among the highs and lows of my search:

First, the air fare: At 1:30 I was perusing a list of Internet discount flights at Smarter Living. Phoenix, Seattle and Portland, Ore., seemed like possibilities. I spotted a Phoenix round trip for $69. When I tried specific flights, the best I could do was $80, but that still looked good, especially because it was a flight from Burbank, more convenient to me than LAX.

I liked the idea of Seattle, too, and at 2:30 I was still lingering on listings of Seattle hotels on sites including Hotel Discounts and TravelNow. (Both sites allow consumers to confine their lodging searches up front to hotels with availability on their chosen nights.)

At 4:30 I banished thoughts of Seattle (too cold and wet) and Portland and booked the $80 Phoenix fare. Now to nail down a room by a big pool with cactus vistas.

Next, the hotel: At first I was tempted by Travelocity’s offer of a $149 room at the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak resort. Expedia had the same hotel at $209 and up, and the hotel itself quoted me $179 when I called. But then I got to talking with an operator at the Pointe.

Yes, she said, there was also a $149 room, but less than half the size of the resort’s traditional standard rooms. It was actually the lockable second bedroom of a suite that sometimes rents as a one-bedroom, sometimes as a two-bedroom. Also, she said, if I was traveling alone, did I know that the Squaw Peak Resort is family-oriented, while its sibling, the Pointe at Tapatio Cliffs, is aimed more at grown-ups? No, I didn’t. Glad to know that.

So I looked at Tapatio Cliffs (which also has lots of pools, multiple restaurants and adjacent hiking trails and stables). Travelscape said it was sold out for the weekend. No sign of it on Site 59 or LastMinuteTravel. Travelocity, however, had a standard suite (all the rooms are suites) at $199.

Again I resorted to the phone. This time a different Pointe operator said there was a $199 room but that it was a handicapped-access room, with a specially outfitted bathroom. For $214, she said, I could get a nice suite.

At 6:45 p.m. I returned to the Web site and booked that $199 room anyway. If I arrived and found a bathroom that ought to be available for disabled travelers, I decided, I could make a fuss then. The Web page said nothing about the bathroom.

Finally, the rental car: At noon Thursday (about 50 hours before my scheduled arrival in Phoenix), I set out to grab the least expensive rental car, screening out off-airport companies for the sake of convenience.

LastMinuteTravel had nothing for me, but 11thHourVacations came up with Advantage, a company I’d never used, at $20.55 daily. The price at the American Express Web site was a tie between Sears and Budget car rentals at $34.99. Travelocity and Expedia had Dollar car rental at $27.99. Yet another site, Atevo, seemed to have it over everybody.

Not only did Atevo have that subcompact Advantage car at $20.55, but it also told me it was a Suzuki Swift. I booked online. But there was a catch. The screen said, “The rate shown is not confirmed.” So I called the toll-free customer service number, and after I’d been on hold for a spell, an agent explained that his company’s computer hookup with Advantage required delays of two minutes to 48 hours for confirmation. To keep things moving, Atevo does bookings with unconfirmed prices, then calls customers back the next day if there’s a change from the advertised rate.

I didn’t like this and asked to have my rate confirmed on the spot (but never said I was a reporter). The agent did so. In fact, she reported, she got me a $19.99 daily rate for an economy car, not necessarily a Suzuki.

Happy ending? Almost.

She also explained that Advantage has a desk at the airport terminal but that its cars are in an off-airport lot. The company can describe itself technically as an on-airport operation, but I would have a 15-minute van ride from the Phoenix terminal to my car. Suddenly all those sites that left Advantage off their on-airport list looked smarter. But I left my booking as it was.

So now, on Thursday afternoon, my itinerary seemed to be in place: Saturday midday flight to Phoenix, rental car pickup, two nights at the Pointe Hilton at Tapatio Cliffs, rental car drop-off, flight back on Monday evening.

All set? Seemed to be.

But when I called a couple of travel agents to see how long it would take them to match my deal (less than 10 minutes), both pointed out that the resort actually had rooms for $169 if I had an auto club card. I did.

The Travelocity Web site never mentioned the auto club rate and had no mechanism for rebooking. So I called a Travelocity operator (the site lists a toll-free number) and said I wanted the $169 rate. (Again, I didn’t say I was a reporter.) By now we were inside the resort’s 72-hour cancellation penalty deadline, so things could have gotten ugly. But the Travelocity agent and the hotel agreed to waive the penalty and rebook me at the better rate. (On Friday I found the $169 rate on Travelocity’s Web site--but it hadn’t been there two days before.)

Virtuality meets reality: Then, of course, came the weekend itself. I flew, I drove, I swam, I hiked, I looked at Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. I wasn’t wild about the resort layout, which forced me, any time I wanted to swim or eat, to walk on a road open to vehicular traffic. But my suite wasn’t a handicapped unit (as the Pointe operator had said it might be).

I also had to open my wallet unexpectedly a few times.

The most startling was at the hotel. At the counter, a clerk told me I’d be paying $169 a night plus $8 more each night in “resort service fees.” These fees were never mentioned in the e-booking process (nor were they mentioned by the travel agents who’d sniffed out the auto club discount). A spokeswoman said the hotel had, for more than three years, charged its guests an extra $8 daily for such services as use of the gym, delivery of a newspaper, in-room coffee and “free” local and credit-card phone calls. This annoyed me, but the clerk gave me no choice. (Later a hotel spokeswoman said the fee was optional, but I never heard that word at the hotel.)

There was also the rental car company. First, the Advantage counter clerk gave me a hard sell on insurance, warning me that “nobody’s” regular insurance covers the rules that hold renters responsible for “downtime” (lost operating hours) if a car needs post-accident repair. The cost for Advantage’s insurance: $7.50 daily for minimum coverage, $12.99 for fuller coverage--more than half the base rental rate. I told the counter man I’d take my chances.

That wasn’t all. My schedule meant I’d have the car for 52 hours. Advantage’s policy (unmentioned in my Internet dealings) is to charge $15 for the first hour past 48 and to add another day’s charge once you pass 49 hours. So I used the car 52 hours and paid for three days. (This is not unusual in the rental car trade. Avis and Hertz in Phoenix, with daily rates about $40, both charge more than $13 hourly for rentals beyond the usual 24-hour increments. But infrequent travelers may not be aware of how those costs add up, and the Web site I used offered no reminders.)

In taking this trip, I joined a club of about 25 million members. That’s according to a recent survey by International Communications Research of Media, Pa., which estimated that 25 million Americans, about a quarter of all Internet users in the U.S., have taken an “unplanned, last-minute or spur-of-the-moment [overnight] trip” of 100 miles or more in the previous six months. (The questioners did not define “last-minute.”)

Demographically, half of the online last-minute travelers surveyed were 34 or younger, 55% were female and 40% had incomes of $50,000 a year or more. The online last-minute travelers were younger and wealthier--all of which helps explain the interest of so many companies in filling our late-breaking needs.

Moral of story (for optimists): The Web can lead you quickly to some attractive prices you might not know about otherwise. In fact, the U.S. Department of Transportation (in an Oct. 20 decision) has found it legal for airlines to offer lower prices by Internet than by telephone, so consumers have more incentive than ever to explore airlines online. But you always learn more (although probably not all) about a product when you can interact with a human being, and it may well save you money and help you find a product that fits you better.

Moral of story (for pessimists): The Internet is a tool like the telephone, and if the companies on the other end want to scratch at you for extra revenue, neither the phone nor the Internet can stop them. Next time I want to pull a weekend together quickly with unfamiliar lodgings, I may just grab an Internet discount air fare, then let a travel agent do the rest.

American Express, https://www.americanexpress.com

Atevo, https://www.atevo.com

11thHourVacations, https://www.11thhourvacations.com

Expedia, https://www.expedia.com

Hotel Discounts, https://www.hoteldiscounts.com

LastMinuteTravel, https://www.lastminutetravel.com

Site 59, https://www.site59.com

Smarter Living, https://www.smarterliving.com

TravelNow, https://www.travelnow.com

Travelocity, https://www.travelocity.com

Travelscape, https://www.travelscape.com

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A Sampling of Internet Sites for the Sharp Procrastinator

Some of these Web sites offer direct booking; others refer consumers to phone numbers or link to other Web sites. All have tailored their offerings to serve last-minute travelers. Here is a sampling based on my research, along with examples of the trips and savings offered:

* LastMinuteTravel, https://www.lastminutetravel.com, is a meta-site that searches the offerings of various travel providers and other Web sites (including https://www.travelscape.com, https://www.site59.com and https://www.autoeurope.com) and lists them in one place. When you’re ready to book, the site connects you directly to the travel provider. (Don’t confuse this site with https://www.lastminute.com, a site based in Britain that concentrates on European destinations.)

Sample trip: On Oct. 24, for trips from LAX or Burbank beginning in the next seven days and costing less than $1,000, the site spat out more than 60 possible flights. I pursued a $497 London round trip (leaving Oct. 30) and found it was on American Airlines and that the price would include $60 to $89 more in “international taxes.” To go further, I had to call the Destination Europe toll-free number. When I did, a remarkable thing happened: The operator told me she had a better fare--a US Airways flight for $412.50 plus $89.96 in airline fuel surcharges and taxes. The flight out was a red-eye connecting through Pittsburgh, and the flight back connected through Charlotte, N.C., but the price was right. (When I called US Airways, the operator’s best price for the same round trip was $1,268.80.)

For my arrival day, the only hotel option on the site was the Park International, not a bad deal for $124 nightly in London’s fashionable Kensington area but not much of a selection either.

* Moment’s Notice, https://www.moments-notice.com, is a New York-based travel club focused mostly on cruises and foreign tours. To book a trip, you must also make a payment of $25 per family per year plus a $15 processing fee. The site has no booking engine; you must call the toll-free number, (888) 241-3366, to book.

Sample trip: On Oct. 23, the site offered a 12-day Chinese tour and Yangtze River cruise (beginning Nov. 24), air fare from major U.S. gateway cities included, for $1,498 and up. The Web site doesn’t disclose the name of the tour or cruise company (in this case, Value World Cruises, based in Fountain Valley) until the consumer calls for more info.

* Site 59, https://www.site59.com, emphasizes domestic trips and package deals, usually air fare and hotel and often a third element (rental car or theater tickets) for one price. About three dozen packages are available at any time. The site names the airlines and hotels. Trips are arranged by theme: leaf-peeping in Toronto, for instance, or “East meets Northwest” in Portland, Ore.

Sample trip: For a Thursday to Sunday in Portland, flying Delta and staying at the downtown Marriott, the base rate was $377 per person (double occupancy). That $377 figure excluded about $41 in taxes, which aren’t disclosed until after the customer gives a credit-card number and is on the brink of buying. (A spokeswoman for the site said an update of the site will correct that flaw.) I asked Delta and Travelocity for Delta’s fares for the same route on the same travel days: Both came back with fares of $480 per person and up.

* Smarter Living, https://www.smarterliving.com is basically a travel site, with a weekly e-mail update service that alerts interested consumers to late-breaking travel discounts. The site doesn’t take bookings; instead it alerts you, then links you to airlines and other travel providers.

Sample trips: Although the airlines don’t usually post their weekly Internet bargain fares until Wednesday, on Monday, Oct. 23, when I asked SmarterLiving to search for specials from LAX, it came up with 18 restricted round-trip options. Among them: Portland, Ore., or Los Cabos, Mexico, for $189 each (on Alaska or Mexicana); Orlando, Fla., for $208 (on Delta); and New York’s La Guardia airport for $218 (Delta again). When I called Delta directly to ask about LAX-LaGuardia fares on the same days, the operator told me that because advance-purchase limits had expired, the price would be more than $2,000.

* TravelWeb, https://www.travelweb.com, has cultivated a growing crop of directly bookable hotels and arranged for Expedia to do its flight searches. For a procrastinator, the site’s greatest asset is its Click-It! Weekends area, which lists hotel rates worldwide for the coming weekend, by locale and by chain, with an availability check one click beyond that.

Sample trips: The site seemed able to deliver when I clicked on the $79 rate it offered in late October for the Wyndham Checkers in downtown Los Angeles. (Contacted by phone, the hotel wouldn’t go below $99.) But the Del Mar Hilton was more complicated. TravelWeb first listed the hotel’s best rate for the next weekend at $129. But when I clicked one step further to check availability (and later double-checked on the Hilton Web site) I found that the $129 rate was available only to full-time teachers and students (ID required at check-in). For the rest of us, the best rate was $139.

* 11thHourVacations, https://www.11thhourvacations.com, mostly aims abroad, offering outdoorsy trips (traveling by bus and camping in Baja, for instance) besides air fares and hotels. When the site does offer domestic trips, they’re usually Las Vegas, Florida, Hawaii or the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Sample trip: On Oct. 23, the site offered Los Angeles consumers round-trip air and a two-night Las Vegas holiday at the Mirage Hotel in early December for $108 per person. Once I started the booking process, however, the site tacked on $57.50 per person in “taxes and fees,” pushing the tab for two to $331.

Later I called 11thHourVacations spokesman Richard Lankford, who said that $40 of that $57.50 was passed-along airline fuel surcharges (which are not taxes but an airline industry device for raising revenues without raising advertised prices) and $12.50 was a booking fee imposed by 11thHourVacations. In other words, about $5 of that $52.50 in “taxes and fees” was really taxes. (Lankford said the company was reevaluating the way it presents those costs.)

But even with those extras, the site’s Vegas deal was attractive. Calling the Mirage directly and visiting the Southwest Airlines Web site, the best price I could come up with for those two days was $636.