Anyone working in these areas is likely to travel periodically nationally and internationally. This page contains information that could be useful for business travel:

• SAFETY:

Before traveling anyplace possibly dangerous, make sure to check the U. S. State Department's  Travel Warnings  and Consular Information Sheets along with the State Department's linked http://travel.state.gov/.  If you will be traveling to a country where health risks could be a concern, consult the travel health information on that country made available from the Center for Desease Control (CDC). If you will be on a cruise, check the CDC's cruise ship sanitation rating for the ship.
• WEATHER:
  

Useful sources of weather information include Intellicast , The Weather Channel , CNN Weather , UM Weather, and local Lawrence city and Kansas state weather.


• CURRENCY CONVERTER, INTERNATIONAL PHONE CALLS, AND WORLD CLOCK TIMES
  

  You can convert currencies easily by using the Universal Currency Converter .  You can find the current time of day at major cities throughout the world by using The World Clock - Time Zones.  You can find international dialing codes for phone or fax calls at International Dialing Codes.
  

• INTERNATIONAL ELECTRICAL PLUG ADAPTERS

Before travelling internationally, you may wish to make sure that you have the plug adapters, voltage converters and transformers, etc., needed to be able to use your laptop computer, cell phone charger, and other appliances.  You can find the information on voltages and frequencies and on plug and socket types at World Standards.  Most laptop computer and cell phone battery chargers and AC adapters are dual voltage working over a wide range of voltages, but there are 13 different plug/socket types in use throughout the world.


• GENERAL TRAVEL RESOURCE PAGES:
  

To see what the big guy on the block has to offer, visit Microsoft's Expedia travel site, and don't forget the well known Fodor's Guide, Frommer's Guide, and Michelin Red Guide.  Also useful are Travelocity and Preview Travel.  If you are going to Asia and have the resources to travel in style, you will want to buy a LUXE city guide.


• HOTELS, AIRLINES, AND RESTAURANTS: 

After reviewing the following information on hotels and flights, you might wish to seek a real bargain by bidding low at  priceline.com .  If you bid and your bid is accepted, your credit card will immediately be billed for the total bid price, and that price is nonrefundable.  Also you will not have complete control over what you get.  For example, with a hotel you can designate the dates, location, and quality rating of the hotel.  Any hotel in the location that you designate and meeting the star quality rating that you request can accept at the price you bid for those dates.  You will get a reply within one hour.  If your bid is not accepted, you will be charged nothing.  I tried this by bidding low for a hotel in downtown Seattle for four nights during the World Congress of the Econometic Society held in Seattle.  I requested a four star hotel.  To my amazement, my bid was accepted for a four star hotel in downtown Seattle on the dates that I requested.  My bid was at 1/3 the rack rate for rooms in that hotel.  In addition, the price that I bid was .37 of the negotiated rate for that same hotel by the Econometric Society for the World Congress of the Econometric Society during their meetings in Seattle.  It is possible to get similar tremendous discounts on airline flights, although you cannot choose the airline and cannot insist on nonstop flights without a plane change.


Hotels:


Among the many hotel chains that now have web sites, the Hilton Hotel Chain's site, including an online concierge service, is especially well designed. The large Best Western Chain of affiliated hotels makes it easy to book reservations either domestically or internationally online. An especially valuable source of information on hotels internationally is the hotelguide.com. Also see hotels.com and the general travel sites above.  The following more focussed sites also can be useful:

					Title: Discount hotels: booking discount star hotels.

					Title: Luxury hotels, budget hotels and inexpensive hotels.
					
					Title:  Downtown Hotels & Airport Hotels.
					
					Title:  Lodging and Accommodations.

					Title:  Hotel reservations and discount hotel reservations.
					
					Title:  Las Vegas Hotels & Shows. 
					
					Title:  Chicago Hotels.		

If you are coming to this Kansas City area, then the place to stay is any of the hotels at the outstanding Country Club Plaza.



Airlines:


If flying into or out of Kansas City Airport, you can find the status of all flights online at flykci.com.  You also can find out about services at the airport, including parking options and fees, and you can book flights on airlines that use Kansas City airport.  To find the toll free numbers or web sites for airlines, see Airline 800 Numbers and Web Sites .  For discounts on flights within the United States, Caribbean, Canada, and Mexico, see Airline Tickets Wholesale, CheapTickets, or Travelocity.com .   Alternatively bid on Priceline.com (see link in bargains section above).  When meeting someone at a flight arrival, you may wish to check on the status of the flight before heading for the airport. You now can do that online at the  FlightTracker site.  Online ratings of airlines change frequently, but my vote for worst airline in the U. S. is United Airlines.  See the online archive of complaints against that airline at Untied Airlines,  which includes a complaint by me.  Some of the sites in the General Travel Resource Pages section above also are useful sources of airline flight information. See, e.g., Expedia, Travelocity, and Preview Travel.


Restaurants:


If you'd like to check out the restaurants where you are going, and perhaps even make reservations before you arrive, you can do so at Zagat's excellent dining guide or the Mobil Travel Guide.  You can find information on restaurants and on much more in most major US cities and some international cities at Citysearch.  If you should be traveling to Lawrence or Kansas City, you might be interested in my own Lawrence and Vicinity Restaurant Reviews.
 

• BUY, RENT, OR LEASE A NEW OR USED CAR
  

Need a new car? Check out AutoWeb, Cars.com, CarSmart, IntelliChoice, AutoDirectory, the well known Auto-By-Tel, Microsoft's MSN Autos, AutoSite, The Kelley Blue Book, Edmund's Auto Buyer's Guide, and VEHIX.COM. Also see Yahoo Autos.  A general auto buying site, containing an especially useful used-car classified ads section is automative.com.


Some manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler , now have online web referral sites. The two most compehensive auto sites are Edmund's and MSN. Of the sites mentioned above, Auto-By-Tel is currently the best known for actually buying vehicles online and operates with the largest volume.  It is well worth a try.  Dealers pay a fixed monthly fee to Auto-By-Tel for exclusive referrals.  I used Auto-By-Tel for an auto purchase, and I was entirely pleased by the price and the ease of the purchase, although I now prefer to correspond with dealers directly by email.  MSN operates in a similar manner to Auto-By-Tel. AutoWeb works a bit differently, by charging a fixed rate to dealers per individual referral. Edmunds' is especially useful to acquire invoice prices paid by dealers and the hidden sources of dealer profit, such as "holdbacks" (a kickback of often 2% to 3%) from manufactures to dealers to help them finance their inventory. Do not assume that invoice price leaves no margin for profit to dealers. You also can use the Web to ferret out advertising fees some dealers try to add, and to keep track of customer rebates and dealer-incentive payments from carmakers. Retailers don't have to give them to you, but you can use them to exact a better price. You also can find out about carmaker rebates available if you don't accept the carmaker's subsidized low interest rate financing.

Perhaps the most innovative site selling cars is CarsDirect, formed by Michael Dell and Bill Gross. They purchase cars from dealers in quantity, receiving a volume discount that they pass along to customers. For the car you choose, they not only supply the list and invoice price, but also their price immediately. You can compare their price for different vehicles you are considering online. Since their price is so easily acquired, it would make sense to start with their price before going to other sites to compare with the competition. Also try InvoiceDealers.com.  But if you have done your research and know what you want and what to expect to pay, you can circumvent all of this by corresponding by email with all of the relevant dealers in your area.  Nearly all dealers have web sites providing their inventory and their email address to use to request a price quote.  Most of the car buying sites would refer you to a dealer's email manager anyway, so you might as well just do it yourself directly.  If you really want to take the time to do some hard bargaining, you might wish to buy the information sold by Fighting Chance.  They recommend an approach that involves sending faxes to dealers, and reputedly can be very effective in producing competition among dealers, especially if the vehicle is not in short supply.  Alternatively you can purchase their information package, and correspond with dealers by email (hard to beat).  If you don't want to pay Fighting Chance, you can acquire much of the same information for free at Edmund's Auto Buyer's Guide and then correspond directly with dealers by email to acquire their "internet prices" on vehicles you find in their inventories online or to be ordered.  I use Edmunds and then correspond with dealers on the internet.


If you have not chosen the car or truck to buy, you can find reviews and road test reports at Microsoft's CarPoint, Kelly's Blue Book, Edmund's Auto Buyer's Guide, and the Consumer Guide Auto Guide.  Edmund's site includes its public "chat line," Town Hall, at which you can find extensive online discussions and comments by consumers. You also can find online the Consumer Reports ratings of cars and trucks. Although biased by advertising, it nevertheless can be useful to read the reviews in the car-enthusiasts magazines' web sites, including Car and Driver, Motor Trend, and Road and Track. The Motor Trend site includes a buying service.

Regarding safety of vehicles, see the Insure.com Crash Test Library, containing crash test results from the National Highway Traffic Safety Institute, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and the Highway Loss Data Institute. Although somewhat redundant, you may also wish to go directly to the Insurance Institute's excellent site, Carsafety.org, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's site on Vehicle and Equipment Information .

For a particularly well designed rental car web site, see Hertz.

Instead of trading in your old used car, or selling it yourself, you may wish to consider donating it to charity.  There are now many charities that accept donated used cars.  One that makes the procedure especially convenient is the Allstate Car Donation Association .

• MOVE:
  

If your travel is resulting in a temporary or permanent move, then you may have use for monstermoving.com and for the National Association of Realtor's Realtor.com , which has a vast nationwide database of houses for sale.  For information on housing price appreciation rates over the past 10 years in various markets throughout the U.S., see homestore.com.  If you are considering moving here to Lawrence, you might be interested in its quality of life.  If you are moving and are concerned about the possible effects of climate change on the location, you can acquire a report at ClimateAppraisal.


• PLOT THE BEST ROUTE AND MAKE A MAP:
  

If you need a map to locate your destination, enter the address of your destination in MSN Maps & Directions and you will be amazed to find that this site will produce online a map taking you directly to the door. The resulting map can be transmitted to others, if for example you wish to provide map instructions for others to get to your destination ( ). If that doesn't do, then try the mapping service of MapQuest or Yahoo Mapping . In this regard, you also may find useful the links in the section, "Search for a Person's Address and Map Location," provided in the Search Tools and Resources section of this web site.  Then there is the amazing Google Street-Views.