Sams Teach Yourself e-Travel Today

The world is only one click away, but most of us need a tour guide anyway. Fortunately, the refreshingly clear Teach Yourself e-Travel helps negotiate the labyrinth of online travel resources, teaching both Internet novices and veterans how to plan travel via the Internet. Author Mark Orwoll starts by introducing readers to the Internet's major travel resources, suggesting ways to keep information organized and showing how to evaluate a Web site's accuracy. A vacation-planning section follows and includes a quiz to help readers identify their travel type and ultimately form realistic appraisals of travel needs, desires, and goals. Readers will also learn how to use the Web to find the perfect travel agent to plan the perfect trip: from a fly-fishing adventure in Oregon to an island-hopping holiday in Greece. And if you can't find that perfect travel agent, learn how to become one, booking airplane tickets, hotels, cruises, and car rentals, all by yourself. And finally, an appendix points to hundreds of useful travel-related Web sites, ranging from learning how to pack to acquiring a visa.

In contrast to many Internet guidebooks, Orwoll's book artfully intertwines technical information and expert tips about travel with personal anecdotes, a sense of humor, and a passion for seeing the world. He writes, "Even though you'll be traveling on the information superhighway, your ultimate goal is to travel in the real world, which is more wondrous, more delightful, more heart stopping, and far, far more astonishing than the bits, bytes, and chips you may use to get there." --Michele Norton