Online services available from passenger airlines, freight carriers, travel agencies, booking services, tourism information resources, and state and foreign tourism agencies are poised to dramatically revolutionize the public's travel and shipping options. Web sites, e-mail, and customized software provide Internet users with an ever-expanding list of options to conduct business, plan vacations, and take advantage of special travel opportunities unaccessible to conventional users of travel agents and telephone booking services.

Already a business can contract for the pick-up, shipment, and tracking of its products, and then book air travel, hotel, and rental car for an executive to visit its customers through the net. This industry promises to grow substantially in the next few years, with forecasts for online airline ticket sales alone ranging from $1.6 to over $4 billion by the year 2000 from an estimated $700 million in 1997.

Past Advances Lead to New Technologies

Airlines have long been innovators of electronic technologies designed to speed transfer of travel information to customers, to guarantee speedy delivery of important packages, and to reduce costs and expand marketing options. Computer reservation systems used by travel agents in the United States and around the world originally were developed by airlines as in-house booking systems.

Now airlines and computer reservation systems have generated web sites designed to attract travelers and lower distribution costs. Business and leisure travelers can use these web sites to make reservations and pay for their travel over the Internet. Airlines e-mail potential travelers with special fares for Internet users each week. A recent survey by the Travel Industry Association of America predicts that by the end of 1998 nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population will use cyberspace to consider travel options.

Electronic Travel Agents And Guides

Booking travel directly through an airline's web site saves the carrier distribution costs associated with travel agent sales. Possibly the most promising use of the World Wide Web for trip planning, however, is to provide travelers with exciting new ways to research travel destinations and take advantage of special air fares for Internet users.