Best of the Web: Cyberspace Allies of Road Warriors

A slew of online Samaritans offer information and other aid to small-business travelers. But are the Web sites really that helpful?

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For road warriors the Web is both friend and foe. On one hand, virtually every piece of business-travel information you can imagine is available online. You can find the cheapest flight from Baltimore to Kalamazoo. You can learn what equipment you'll need to hook up your laptop in Bali.

On the other hand, you may have to negotiate a maze of links and clicks to locate what you want. You may have to dig through a mound of blinking advertising and flashing banners to unearth the few gems of information you need. If the hassle is too great, the information may as well not be there at all. Rather than messing around at a site that contains overwhelming amounts of off-mark material, most people will despair and leave quickly.

The Web sites that hope to be one-stop shops for travel-related information and services face a huge challenge: how to present all that stuff in a manageable way. Inc. has identified seven of the strongest sites that cater to small-business travelers. Like the market they serve, the sites have their peculiarities. Trip.com, Biztravel.com, and Office.com all put flight-booking-and-purchasing features front and center, surrounded by tools like maps and city guides and, in the case of Trip.com, breaking news stories. ("Delta warns of delays, flight cancellations," one recent dispatch said.) RoadNews.com and Magellans.com specialize in information and essays about travel abroad. Both sites, for example, explain how to use your modem with different kinds of phones all over the world.

All seven sites are free. They make money from such things as banner ads or royalties from services they sell for others. Some are owned by big corporations -- notably, SkyGuide.net is part of American Express, and Office.com belongs to Winstar Communications and CBS. Two of the sites, RoadNews.com and Business-Trip.com, are solo efforts.

We had eight small-company CEOs who frequently travel review the sites. We didn't ask them to attempt to book flights. Nor did they test every available service, such as the features on a couple of sites that organize frequent-flier-account information online. The panelists did evaluate how easy it was to navigate each site and whether the information offered was useful. The judges were on the lookout particularly for the Three Plagues of the Web: rotten design, a muddled mission, and a one-stop destination that delivers less than promised.

Here is what the CEOs found in their journeys through cyberspace.

www.biztravel.com
What it's good for: Booking flights. The site also offers frequently updated news about airports and airlines. (New York's LaGuardia "accounted for 25% of all air-traffic delays in the USA" in September 2000, noted one posting last fall.)
Don't waste your time if: You need to find information quickly. Because the site lacks a searchable database, visitors must scroll through lots of pages to ferret out price specials and other information.
What our CEOs had to say: The site was hard to navigate. "It needs a more user-friendly format to allow ease of movement through the booking processes," said one. "The personal-miles tracking has the most potential," added another CEO, "but the user interface is boring and weak." Also, text is confined to a small area at the bottom right of a user's screen.
What you should know: Biztravel.com's "FareGuard" service searches for cheaper flights after you've booked and notifies you if an alternative will net you $25 or more in savings after paying all fees.

www.business-trip.com
What it's good for: Links, links, and more links to airlines, rental-car agencies, travel-related news, and city guides. Another feature: it takes but one click to check E-mail, calculate currency conversions, or track packages en route.
Don't waste your time if: You're put off by soloists. After posting his list of road-warrior bookmarks online in 1996, Michael Steinberg built the site as a labor of love. He still runs it by himself.
What our CEOs had to say: The site's design borders on the truly awful. "It's kind of ugly," said one panelist. Among the shortcomings: too many banners slow the pages' downloading, and text sometimes disappears into the left-side menu bar. Still, one reviewer overlooked the visual flaws. "It contains such a comprehensive list of travel sites that it may be easier to just bookmark this one site," said the CEO. "Chances are, it contains links to all your favorite travel sites, and it may also provide some alternatives to the old tried-and-trues."
What you should know: There's a special section for PalmPilot users.

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