The Best Travel Websites

The Best Travel Websites Mike Agerbo: Well, if you're in business one thing that you probably do a lot is business travel. Well, what do you look for? What are some good websites to check out to make it a little bit easier? We've got Claire Newel from Travel Best Bets, best selling author as well. Look at that— Claire Newell: This is new, this is new. Mike Agerbo: I've got to get the book right here. So I can get my picture on the front here as well. Claire Newell: You look good on the cover of the book. Mike Agerbo: I often picked that myself but I don’t know if other would. I want to talk about some websites. Now, you’ve obviously been in the business many years now and have come across some cool ones to make it little easier on the business— Claire Newell: Some that are definitely better than others? Mike Agerbo: Okay. Let's go through some of them here, Flight Tracker. Claire Newell: One of my favorites for flight tracking is FlightAware.com for it’s also an easy website to remember. But it's neat because you can actually go the site and see where your flight is in air. So if you're having someone pick you up, you can go and you can see if you're going to be late, where you are in flight and you can do it for the flight ahead of you so that you can know if you're just going to be on time which is more important than anything. Mike Agerbo: So you can be in the airport, login to a hot spot there and you can see that, “Oh, your flight is going to be like three hours late because it's still over Iowa”. Claire Newell: Exactly. Mike Agerbo: That’s very cool. And that’s cool for people picking you up as well because then they know exactly what's happening. And so just it shows a little plane right on the map. Claire Newell: Right, on the map which is—and they track thousands and thousands of flights for most major airlines so it's very handy. The other website that I really like is SeatGuru.com. And I kind of don’t want to let this one under the bag but here we go. You can go on to this website and you can see every major carrier and what they're aircrafts are and what the configuration of the plans are. So you can find out the exit rows are or which are the bulk heads. It also tells you what meals you're going to getting in flight. It's so handy. Mike Agerbo: So this way here, obviously the exit rows and things like that have more leg rooms so you can go to the airport of booking in online with that knowledge and get a better seat. Claire Newell: Absolutely. You can pick it ahead of time. It's a really great website to go to. Mike Agerbo: But now that everyone knows, all the seats will be gone. Claire Newell: I know. We shouldn’t let that one out of the bag. Mike Agerbo: No, probably not. Claire Newell: Kept that to ourselves. Anyway, it's a good site. The other one is citysearch.com and I've been using this site quite a lot lately because I'm going into cities that I haven’t been previously in. And the nice thing about this is that when you want to entertain going out for lunch or going out in evening or taking out clients and you don’t know a city, you don’t want to just be going to run all the meal places. You want to go somewhere of trendy and fun and this has all of those restaurants, night clubs, a great theater and choose. So, that’s a great one if you don’t know what city and you haven’t been there before and you’re looking for a little bit of advice. Mike Agerbo: Does it rate them or how is it? Claire Newell: It does usually tells the top 10 or the top 1 trendiest, top 10 most popular. And if you're looking for a steak house, you can put in steak house and it will pop up the top 10 most popular. It is very handy for business travelers. Mike Agerbo: All of this because a lot of times when I'm cities, you're right, I don’t know where to go. I always end up in like a red lobster something which you know isn’t like the coolest place, I mean— Claire Newell: Hey, it's good solid food. But if you wanted to go somewhere very unique and trendy and impress your business client, that would be the site to go to. Mike Agerbo: Very cool. Claire Newell: The other one that I go to quite often and it's because I don’t always have the numbers at my finger tips is INFOCANADADIRECT.com. And the reason I like the site is because calling home from wherever I might be, whether it's London or top of the —. You can—they're getting international Canadian operator and get charged. Once you're connected to that, there’s toll free numbers in every major country, probably I think a 150 countries are on there now. You can call it toll free from wherever you are and then they will connect you to Canadian operator and then your charged whatever the Canadian rates are at that time. So whether it's Tallies or Belle, you’re charged those rates. It's very handy and it came in very handy when I was in Mexico calling home. The fee for calling home without using the services was $40.00 just to connect. Mike Agerbo: $40.00? Claire Newell: And then the long distance on top $140.00 phone call. Mike Agerbo: So you're in England for example and you dial this toll free number? Claire Newell: Yeah, you can go to INFOCANADADIRECT.com. It will list all of the countries. You click England. That’s where you are and it will list the toll free number. You call that number and they’ll connect you with Canadian operator. Mike Agerbo: Do you get charged for that? Claire Newell: Free call. Unless you're calling from a hotel room that charges you for a phone call from your hotel room, then I would just recommend it you go to a phone booth. Mike Agerbo: So definitely something that you should bookmark to save yourself at least $40.00. Claire Newell: Absolutely. Mike Agerbo: While you're in Mexico. What else do we got? Claire Newell: There’s a couple of them that I think are handy. If you're looking for currency exchange, XE.com is very handy. Time Zones because I get confused with Time Zones, WorldTimeZone.com is easy. Finding out what to pack? Weather.com comes in very handy. And if you don’t know a city, mapquest.com can come in very handy if you're looking for a hotel to a restaurant, or a hotel to your business meeting, very handy to print off. Mike Agerbo: So very cool. And obviously all of them are in your book? Claire Newell: They're in the back, Useful Website Section. Mike Agerbo: Very cool, thanks for joining us Claire. Claire Newell: Thanks Mike. Mike Agerbo: Claire Newell from Travel Best Bets. Check out her new book online and in bookstores now.