- Order travel cash online from Travelex.co.nz or major banks' websites for pickup from branches or the airport
- Search for the unusual, such as climbing to Mt Everest's base camp or seeing polar bears in Canada. In fact, the more adventurous your travel horizons, the more valuable the internet becomes.
Not only can we do these things, we are in huge numbers. Last year Nielsen/NetRatings found that 27.5 per cent of regular internet users had looked up travel information online. In January, it found that travel-related purchases led the way in online spending, with 41 per cent of regular internet users having made travel-related purchases over a 12-month period.
So what are travellers looking at online? There are literally thousands of travel-related websites in New Zealand and hundreds of thousands worldwide offering everything from luxury cruises to backpacker accommodation.
If shopping around for flights is on your mind, then you're likely to find yourself at AirNewZealand.co.nz, New Zealand's most popular travel website, or aggregate sites offering many airlines' fares, such as Zuji.co.nz or Houseoftravel.co.nz.
If you can fly there, then you can probably buy a fare through Zuji, and an internationally competitive one at that. Testing Zuji's search engine, I asked for a return fare from Nadi in Fiji to Nashville, Tennessee, and found one in a matter of seconds. A few clicks more and I found flights within Europe and the US. Zuji also allows you to book cars, hotels, insurance and activities all in one go, without having to visit multiple websites. When I checked out Zuji's activities pages, there were more than 60 separate activities, excursions and cultural trips for Sydney alone and thousands worldwide, including exotic locations from Shanghai to Mexico City. You'll even find local five-day weather reports and excerpts from the Lonely Planet guides to most tourist destinations.
The home-grown House of Travel website offers a service where you can search every fare on every airline within New Zealand, as well as to a few short-haul destinations, such as Nadi and Sydney. At any point in the booking process you can click a button, your details are saved and you can ask for a House of Travel representative to phone or email you. The House of Travel's web bookings are processed by its "web outlet", where members of staff keep an eye out for mistakes, such as booking a return flight in the wrong month.
Itchyfeet.co.nz offers competitive deals on its website, but it doesn't have online booking. Instead you're asked to fill in an online form and wait for an email or phone call back from one of its freelance booking agents, who in my experience are fast and helpful.
Most large travel agency chains have much the same deals on their websites as in the branches. But there are still ways to save money by using the internet. You'll find web-only specials at airlines such as AirNewZealand.co.nz and FreedomAir.com. Using the internet makes it easier to shop around and you increase your chances of finding the best deal. You can also save money by booking last-minute accommodation deals on sites such as Wotif.com.
Even more important than money sometimes is the time you can save and the ability to book when it suits you. The busiest times of the day on House of Travel's website are between 8-10am in the morning and 1-3pm in the afternoon.
