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Vacation Planning Made Easy
By Heather Reid
June 15, 2002
Vacation, trip, outing, holiday, break, days off, time off, leave, rest, escape...
No matter how you word it, vacation means one thing and one thing alone: freedom! You can get away from all your troubles... The everyday commotion of work, school, parents, in-laws, friends, co-workers, and kids, and just relax.
That is, if you have a properly planned vacation.
Wait a minute... "Properly planned" sounds like the very vacation that you've intended as a release from stress might be a source of stress in itself. Fortunately, the World Wide Web now provides you with the chance to plan your vacation from the comfort of your own home.
By visiting http://travel.yahoo.com, you can access meticulously planned trips that are ready to purchase, lists of web sites to visit if you are looking for a specific trip style (couple, family, hiking), travel updates, picture galleries, on-line shopping for your travelling needs and much more. There is also a Canadian counterpart to this site at ca.travel.yahoo.com. Both sites are very similar but travel.yahoo.com offers just a few more choices, so the focus of this article is on the American site.
My favourite feature on the site is the on-line reservation tool.
There are a total of seven categories for on-line reservations. They include air, car, train (available on the Canadian site), hotel, vacations, cruises and specials. The air, car and train reservation pages are pretty straightforward. You click on either the image of the airplane, car or train and then enter the days you are travelling, the company you prefer to travel with (if you have a preference) and a few other details. You then submit your form electronically and the site will provide you with a list of your results. Simply click on the link of your choice to fill out some personal information and your transportation will be booked. If you are looking for a hotel room, you can either search by city, postal code or address. There is also the option of finding hotels close to airports or tourist attractions. The form also allows you to pick the type of hotel you would like to stay in, offering accomodations in first class, bed and breakfast, and historical settings among many others.
If you are looking for vacations that are entirely pre-planned, click on the "Vacation" icon on the home page. Under "Vacation Tools" (to the left of your screen), click on "Tour Specials" and you get a list of pre-planned tours. By clicking on a tour that interests you, you get a brief description of the tour, package prices, booking options, and a tour itinerary. Last-minute specials and adventure travel vacations (which are also found under vacation tools) are very similar to tour specials. When you go back to the home page and click on the cruise icon, follow the same sort of procedure used in the vacation section of the web page.
So, if you are in desperate need of some time off or if you want to spend some quality time with loved ones away from home, travel.yahoo.com or ca.travel.yahoo.com are two great web sites that take away some of the stress of planning your vacation. Happy trails!
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