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John Hart
interviewed by Anthony Qaiyum on September 21, 1995
"If you get on the Internet and look at the page of the destination you're after, you probably will find some interesting values that the travel agent doesn't know about."
John Hart maintains Travel Hotlinks, a site with lists of resources for air travel at discounted prices.
Tripod: When I need to travel, if I walk right into the travel agency and tell them what I need, am I getting ripped off?
JH: Well, it depends on whether you're doing business travel or leisure travel. If you're doing business travel, you're going to get ripped off no matter where you go, because whether you go to the airline or the travel agent, the prices are going to be high. If you've got to get from point A to point B this weekend, that's where the airlines make their money. From people who have got to get somewhere now, and have not bought their ticket in advance. And that happens. If you count the seats in an airplane -- you get on and do your own little survey -- "Hey you, did you book this 7 days [or] twenty one days in advance?" You're going to hear: "Are you kidding? I got the word this morning." You'll find that the majority of people in first class or business class will tell you: "I had to buy this ticket yesterday, or the day before." That's where the airlines are making big profits, and of course the tickets are extremely high priced. So the question is how do you get around that? The answer is, the very lowest price in the world is through a consolidator. Primarily because the consolidator buys bulk seats from all the airlines and puts a little markup on there and sells them at a greatly reduced rate. For example, you can go from California to Florida right now for $359, and you won't find that price anywhere through the airlines on a regular basis. So you look through consolidators first.
Tripod: Are these reliable? You hear such mixed reviews. Some people tell you they're great, but then you always hear the nightmare stories.
JH: Well, there's always some bad apples in the bunch. Every city has a group of consolidators, or bucket shops, as they're sometimes called, and most are very good, but, in every city there's probably one or two that are unreliable. But if you do a little research you should be okay.
Tripod: And the seats will be on the same airlines as you would normally fly?
JH: Yes. They sell tickets on the major airlines for a lower price than the airlines themselves do. And even if you want to go a step above that, you can book night flights on America West or other airlines. They aren't as cheap as the consolidator tickets, but they still offer some great deals. Most of the airlines offer them, but I mention America West, because they specialize in these after midnight flights. When I fly, I always try to get one of these late flights, because you save so much money.
Tripod: And what about leisure travel?
JH: As far as leisure travel goes, you've got time to book in advance. You're thinking about a ski vacation, or maybe spring break, so you've got plenty of time to book and buy in advance.
Tripod: And in those situations the travel agents will be able to help you...
JH: Yeah, they're gonna look through everything they've got available right now, and they'll come up with some pretty good values. But I think that if you get on the Internet, on the world wide web and look at the page of the destination you're after -- lets say Orlando or Amsterdam or wherever -- you probably will find some interesting values that the travel agent doesn't know about. This may come as a surprise, but travel agents do not have all of the data, all of the great values that are out there in front of them. And they don't have access to it through the reservation systems that they use. That's one of the reasons that I have such a high number of travel agents subscribing to Travelgram. The data flow into my office is now getting much greater than I expected, and I think, because I do such a good job of reporting on this stuff, that's why travel agents hang onto copies of Travelgram.
Tripod: So you think the Web is really the future of travel information?
JH: Yeah, absolutely.
Tripod: Do you think the online reservation services are living up to their promises?
JH: Not at the moment. No...But they will. The problem is the interface is too difficult to use. There are some interesting products out there, some stand alone software products that are interesting to use. One of them comes to mind that relates to Compuserve. It accesses Easy Saver. It'll give you some good information, but it isn't necessarily going to give you the lowest value. For example it does not include last minute changes by airlines. All the changes made today, Thursday, by American Airlines, TWA and United will not be in the Easy Saver Reservation System today or tomorrow. It just isn't going to happen -- the elephant isn't going to move that fast. So, if you access the web page on the Internet that you're interested in -- the destination web page -- you'll probably get a better value. And why not do that anyway, because you get something to tell the travel agent. You could say "Hey I want to go to Amsterdam, and I see on Amsterdam's web page, that there's this great lodging value. Can you check this out?" Now they'll probably say, "We'll try, but we're not necessarily going to have that information." I've set up a list of what I consider to be the best values on the world wide web. My page is called Travel Hotlinks. And that lists what I think are good values. You click on those, like "destinations" and you look at where you want to go -- say, San Diego, Orlando, or Amsterdam, or Alaska, whatever -- click on that, go check it out, and if you find something that looks good, then ask your travel agent. But be prepared for "duhh?" Sometimes you have to do some of the work yourself.
Tripod: What, in your opinion, are the best travel resources on the Web?
JH: Well, I think that my Travelgram has to be considered one of the best resources, because I put together so many of the values that are otherwise hard to find. But as far as other resources go, there's also my Travel Hotlinks, which, as I've mentioned, contains what I feel to be the travel resources. You can also look up travel on Yahoo and you'll get loads of travel links. But the problem is knowing where to go. You can do an Internet search but chances are you won't find what you're looking for. Try entering "Bahamas," "airlines," and "discounts" on Lycos or any one of those search engines, and see what you get. I mean, forget it. I think you have a much better chance if you look for a particular destination city and then see what they have to offer. But it's all about knowing where to start off, and that's what I try to do in my Travel Hotlinks. Give the traveler a place to begin looking for deals.
Tripod: Can you pick one really great travel bargain for students?
JH: Sure. It's called Student Travel Association, STA, out of Massachusetts. Here's an organization, and there are many out there, that set up a student discount card. In fact, it goes over well at major universities. For example, I contacted Harvard, and their student body PR guy, and I said "Do you like the card?" And he said, "Oh God, it's great. We keep renewing. We love it!" It costs $20 a year, I believe, and you know how car rental agencies won't rent to students? Well they cut a deal with National Car Rental where you show them the card and they rent you a car. No questions asked. And they waive a lot of nonsense stuff that you would have to go through. A lot of the paperwork, they just waive. They've also got deals on airlines, deals on hotels, deals on Amtrak. This is a great value, this card, and it's only one of many deals that I've dug up and reported on in the past on Travelgram. For example, TWA's four coupons -- travel anywhere in the United States, over the holidays. They are not blocked out. It went for something like $499, and it was a heck of a deal. Tremendous deal. American Express consistently comes up with terrific deals. But you know what? They only tell their cardholders, and they tell their cardholders by mail.
Tripod: Yeah, so they can't get it fast enough for it to be useful.
JH: Not fast enough, and some people might just consider it junk mail, or a bill they don't want to pay right now. So I'm in constant contact with the PR people at American Express. I tell Travelgram subscribers and readers, "hey this is what's going on." Same with Visa. Same with Mastercard. So yeah, there are terrific values out there, and the consumer, the traveler has just got to dig a little bit. And the best resource, the best tool, I think you can have is the email or web version of Travelgram. It's a great starting place. You can say, "Oh look at this. Four travel coupons -- no blackouts over the holidays -- $499. Gee!" And you call TWA and they say, "Well yeah, and if you like that, how about this..." Airlines tend to do that. They don't advertise every single thing they have available. They don't even tell me everything they have. They're getting into this self marketing approach where they've got you on the reservation system -- you've called the toll free number -- now they're going to pitch you. That's fine, that's good. I mean that's what we want. We want them to be highly competitive.
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