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(c) Elliott Publishing.

Perchance to Dream
Kirby's Korner ˇ September 22, 2000

The Internet is filled with platforms to launch armchair travel dreams.

Forget the practical -- the booking engines that get so much attention, or locations such as Trip.com or OAG where you can track precise locations of aircraft in flight. We're dreaming.

Forget, also, Web sites dedicated to particular subjects, such as the many adventure travel sites. Our dreams contain multitudes; they will not be restrained.

Look, instead, for general-purpose travel locations that let you ponder one of the best parts of travel -- planning where to go on your next trip. Get your infrared mouse prepared, lean back in an easy chair, and get that finger set to click.

Ready?

Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel Online has undergone ownership changes since I last looked in on online travel guides: the company is now owned by Newsweek. Luckily, only bad parts of the site have changed: it is much nicer to look at than it had been.

Underlying the design, you'll still find the crusty attitude of Arthur Frommer himself, who should be a Ticked.com writer because of his willingness to damn the torpedoes and explain things as he sees them. There's not a lot of organization to the site, but for travel dreamers that's a plus. You can spend hours clicking from page to page and getting a refreshingly original look at locations from Frommer's unique point of view.

Concierge.com draws on material published by the Condé Nast stable of magazines, as well as information from publishing sibling Fodor's Travel Publishing. That's not a bad heritage if you're trying to fulfill travel dreams. Look for new, more interactive travel content -- daily reports and photos from a sailing adventure, for example -- as a fairly new decision to pursue original ideas receives stronger attention.

Fodors.com gets the nod for one of the best online travel efforts available. You'll find good destination information from the printed Fodors Travel guidebooks and active discussion groups if you want to talk your dreams over with others. Of particular interest is a personalized, interactive "destination miniguide" feature, which lets you choose what you want to know about cities worldwide. Sleep on this one.

Let's Go is the online version of a series of travel books written by Harvard University students. There's not much to say about the original content on the site. Let's Go's key feature is a fantastic series of links to other resources on the Web, ranging from the practical to the fanciful. Start clicking, and you'll wonder where your afternoon went.

Lonely Planet Online is the Web version of one of the leading guidebook-publishers-with-attitude. If you like the written attitude -- and I do -- you'll like the online presence. You'll find information of the sort found elsewhere, with one big advantage: the printed books are updated fairly frequently online, so you can almost always find the latest Lonely Planet "take" on destinations around the world.

(The publisher is also responsible for the CitySync series of Palm-based city guides. And, thank you very much, I've figured out how to make them work.)

Rough Guides is a disappointment in its online incarnation, as poor online as it is good in the printed version. There's little on the Web site to satisfy the online dreamer, although Rough Guides licenses its content to many other Web sites. And as the site exists today, there are clear errors that raise questions about reliability of the rest of the information -- a link for booking travel to a facility that hasn't existed for six months; a link to a sister company that operates the site but now has a new name and a different Web address.

While we're dreaming, there's one more spot to consider, though it's not quite ready yet. Rand McNally's online presence is about to take off. It is still largely oriented toward the company's core business of selling maps. During the fall, however, expect to see added content -- both original and from other publishers -- on a site that promises to be highly personalized and interactive.

Sweet dreams.

David Kirby is the content manager at startup company iJET.com and was the founding editor of Interactive Travel Report. His column appears on Friday. You can reach him at david@ticked.com.