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Published in Travel Weekly
March 29, 1999
Navigate the Web for Travel Products
This list was compiled by Greg Merkley, president of
Evanston, Ill.-based Travel Technology & Magic, which owns and operates
the PositiveSpace on-line directory for travel agents at www.positivespace.com.
Agents will find that all of these sites detailed below,
along with complete contact information, are listed on the PositiveSpace
Web site.
Tours can be a profitable product to sell, but the many
options and suppliers make it a challenge to select the right product.
However, this is why agents are valuable to tour operators:
They can use the breadth and depth of their travel knowledge to help the
traveler sort through the complex world of tour products and make the best
match. Having access to Web sites only enhances that knowledge.
Listing a few Web sites doesn't do justice to such a diverse
segment of the industry, so I chose a few sites, named below, to whet your
appetite for what's out there. I identified routes two basic routes to do
some searching of your own: search engines and trade directories.
Search engines hunt through Web pages for keywords selected
by the person doing a search. There is no quality control, and the quantity
of choices you get from a search can be prodigious. Some search sites have
made the work a little easier by creating categories of sites, like travel,
though these are more for the consumers than the trade.
Our site, PositiveSpace, is linked to about 60 operator
sites. The U.S. Tour Operators Association (USTOA) and the National Tour
Association also provide tour operator listings.
Search engines
Excite lists tour operator sites in its travel section.
www.excite.com/travel/reservations/tours/tour_companies
Yahoo! lists more than 4,500 tour operators by specialty.
dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Travel/Tour_Operators/
Associations
USTOA has an extensive Web site that includes a listing
of its member tour operators. The site also has access to VacationPackager,
which is presented by Thomas Travel Ventures, publishers of the Official
Tour Directory. www.ustoa.com/
NTA sponsors a site that has a members-only area for NTA
member travel agencies. www.ntaonline.com/
Specialty tours
Midnight Sun Adventure Travel is a Canadian adventure agency
specializing in small-group travel that connects travelers with unique outdoor
experiences in western Canada and Alaska. www.midnightsuntravel.com/
GolfPac packages golf vacations to Florida, Arizona, Palm
Springs, the Carolinas and the British Isles. It provides agents with on-line
quotes directly from the Golf Pac database. www.golfpacinc.com/
SpaFinders is a wholesaler for 200 spas worldwide that
will work with travel agents. www.spafinders.com
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