Published in Travel Weekly

September 10, 1998

Six Web sites that can help agents with their everyday tasks

The following six Web sites demonstrate the day-to-day value that the Internet can offer to frontline agents. The Web isn't always about "killer applications" that transform the travel agency business in one fell swoop.

Often, the Web simply makes it faster and easier to do mundane things, like tracking ticket shipments or looking up phone numbers or ZIP codes, all of which take time away from more productive and profitable activities.

Area Code Decoder
This site, sponsored by a telephone company, enables you to look up country, area and city telephone codes, or, reversing the process, you can decode an area or city code and find the name and location of the city.

US Post Office Zip Code Search
The U.S. Postal Service provides a fast and easy way to look up ZIP (and ZIP+4) codes for any U.S. address.

Measurements Converter
You can use this fast, handy site to convert nearly any sort of measurement, from miles to kilometers; Celsius to Fahrenheit, or kilograms to pounds to stone.

Airborne Express
Airborne's site enables you to immediately check the delivery status of any package using just the airbill number or check the status of up to 20 packages using an e-mail reply service.

Federal Express
You can track your FedEx package using the airbill date and approximate shipping date. Multiple package tracking by e-mail is available, but it is more complex than Airborne's.

UPS
UPS allows you to track delivery of any package with an airbill number either by e-mail or via the Web. This site also enables the user to track packages by a shipper-provided reference number.

This list was prepared by Greg Merkley, president of Evanston, Ill.-based Travel Technology & Magic, which owns the PositiveSpace Web site for travel agents at www.positivespace.com. All of these sites are listed in the Business Resource section of PositiveSpace.