sábado, 15 de enero de 2011

Narrowing the Choices, Online

Published: January 11, 2011

WHEN it comes to planning a vacation, travelers can either spend hours online figuring out where to go, which flights and hotels to book, and what to do when they get there, or they can call a travel agent to figure it out for them. Now, a new breed of members-only Web sites is offering something in between.

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Mark Matcho

Call it the curated search. These hybrid sites aim to eliminate much of the annoyance of online trip planning by winnowing the selection of hotels and destinations to an edited list, which has been vetted to appeal to the sensibilities of affluent travelers. Instead of 600 hotels in Los Angeles, for example, you may get only 11. An added attraction: travelers are offered the personalized help of offline experts to customize their vacation.

The sites include Jetsetter.com, which this week introduced an edited list of hotels and vacations that have been reviewed by Jetsetter correspondents. Unlike the hotel deals that are offered through the site’s popular flash sales, these accommodations can be booked at any time. Jetsetter is also testing a program that, for a fee of about $150, pairs members with travel writers who have been to the selected destination.

MyLittleSwans.com, a new high-end travel site, is focused primarily on family travel with suggested itineraries for more than 30 destinations, based on vacations taken by the founder, Katrina Garnett, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and her family. Members can duplicate those experiences, which include camel rides in Morocco and tango lessons inArgentina, or work with the same operators and guides the family used on their trips to customize a new vacation.

NextGreatPlace.com, a start-up, is creating a matchmaking service for travelers seeking high-end vacations at screened resorts, villas and other properties. And at least one members-only site, RueLaLa.com, has teamed up with Virtuoso, an upscale travel agent network, to offer members who book luxury travel deals a free consultation with travel experts.

The sites are aimed at travelers frustrated with sites that fail to simplify the planning and booking process. “The old infrastructure needs to be taken apart for online travel,” said Ms. Garnett of MyLittleSwans, referring to the searches that require travelers to sift through hundreds of options. “People are looking for what’s trusted and vetted.”

Indeed, a study by Forrester Research found that in the first three months of 2010, the number of leisure travelers in the United States who liked using the Web to plan and book their vacations dropped to 47 percent, down from 53 percent in 2007. Overall the growth of online leisure travelers is expected to slow, increasing by just 3 percent between 2009 and 2014.

MyLittleSwans was partly born of Ms. Garnett’s own frustrations. Booking sites, she said, didn’t offer insider access, and many agents didn’t have the local insight of an on-the-ground tour operator. “I was always calling different travel agents and asking, ‘Have you been there?’ They’d say no. I’d know more about a place before booking a trip than they would.”

So after years of friends copying her upscale family vacations, she created the site, which lists her itineraries and puts travelers in touch with tour operators and local guides she has vetted.

NextGreatPlace.com aims to gain traveler trust by using a 300-point checklist of amenities such as air-conditioning and DVD players as a way to ensure that accommodations meet certain quality criteria.

Jetsetter’s new hotel collection, dubbed Jetsetter 24/7, filters hotel options to a list of about 150 properties that include brands like Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts and the Rocco Forte Collection and boutique hotels like the Chambers in New York. Each hotel is vetted by a Jetsetter staff member who has visited the hotel, though not necessarily anonymously. Vacations to Machu Picchu and other destinations will also be offered. Detailed reviews are posted on the site, along with pricing and availability, and a staff of 12 is on hand to assist travelers by phone or e-mail.

Jetsetter is also testing a paid planning program that pairs members with one of 200 travel journalists who have written for publications like Fodor’s guidebooks or Travel & Leisure, and who can suggest itineraries and restaurants and offer other tips to help round out a trip. The fee varies by request but is expected to be $125 to $200.

The Jetsetter program, called the Expert Planning Service, is aimed at Gen Xers like Libby Sullivan, a regional sales manager for a software company in Philadelphia. She is accustomed to booking trips online, but doesn’t want to spend hours planning a trip. “My husband and I are both executives, and our time is very valuable,” she said. “It’s too overwhelming to research this stuff.”

Ms. Sullivan recently tested the Expert Planning Service for a Miami trip. Jetsetter put her in touch with Paul Rubio, an economist turned travel journalist who has written for Fodor’s guidebooks. He suggested the stylish Mondrian South Beach after hearing Ms. Sullivan’s criteria. Though she has yet to take the trip, she said the recommendation “looks absolutely spectacular. It’s a small boutique, exactly what we wanted.”

Membership is easy to obtain. For example, Jetsetter members can invite anyone to join, while travelers without a friend in the network can request membership on the site. MyLittleSwans.com requires travelers simply to register.

Such sites may hold potential for travelers looking for new planning options, but they do have drawbacks. For one thing, the sites are aimed at well-heeled travelers, offering little to those on a budget. Although Jetsetter offers luxury for less through flash sales, MyLittleSwans offers potential savings by cutting out the middlemen, .

“That’s great if you’re someone at Goldman Sachs,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester, but not “if you are someone who has a more modest income.”

Secondly, the options might be too limited for some travelers. MyLittleSwans features roughly 35 destinations, though its recommended suppliers can plan trips in more than 80 countries. And NextGreatPlace.com, which debuted this month, has only four properties in two destinations — Vail, Colo., and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Its goal is to establish 100 destinations in five years.

And while the sites specialize in the experiential side of a trip — hunting down the perfect Italian villa, for instance — getting there requires more work on your part. Jetsetter doesn’t offer car rentals or flights. And while a travel adviser at MyLittleSwans is available 24/7 via e-mail and phone, the site doesn’t handle bookings, but rather makes referrals.

So if you’re looking to splurge on a vacation but find the options presented by large travel sites like Expedia or Travelocity too daunting, these curated search sites will quickly supply you with filtered recommendations so you don’t have to waste hours online. But if you want to find a budget hotel in Barcelona, a search engine like Expedia, not Jetsetter, might be better.

And if you want a personal advocate in case your flight is canceled and you end up stranded at the airport instead of ensconced in that perfect Tuscan villa, better call a travel agent.