Beat of Hawaii and Beyond: Travel Deals, Tips, Events, Culture

Here’s a tip I’ve been using with great success that I want to share with Beat of Hawaii readers:

Google Advanced Search can yield superior results that help you find the best travel deals.

Don’t stop at just a Basic Search which may still be a good starting point to find deals in any market, be they for airfares, hotels, car rentals, theater tickets and more.

1. Advanced search highlights.

Here’s how to do it:

Take for example a search for Hawaii hotel deals. A basic Google search will yield results that are all over the map. It’s hard to find things of value without wasting a lot of time sorting through the results. On the first page alone, these include

• TripAdvisor reviews.
• Posts up to 1 1/2 years old.
• A plethora of Splogs (advertising spam blogs).

When I change the date criteria, however, the search results are vastly different and improved. In this instance I changed the date criteria to be for items within the past week. Here’s what I got:

• Kauai Grant Hyatt special offers.
• Third night free offer on Hotel Chatter.
• Yahoo travel package deals.
• Expedia Hawaii deals.
• And two Beat of Hawaii posts on hotel deals.

2. Revised advanced search.

When I’m in active trip planning mode, as I have been recently, there are certain things I want to look at daily. So I use the same advanced search as above, but change the criteria from “past week” to “past 24 hours.” That way I only have to sort through what’s new since I last checked (which in this case was yesterday).

Let me know if this helps with your travel searches. It has really improved them for me.

I’ve been very fortunate to spend the majority of my life’s flying time in the front of the plane. It started decades ago and I’ve rarely flown in economy since. One of those rarities is pictured above when we made the mistake of flying economy from LAX to Bangkok. I’m not sure however that the photo does justice to exactly how uncomfortable it was.

We’re off to New York this week, and we’ll be flying in economy. This tide may now be shifting not only for us, but as an industry trend.

Why are we flying economy?

We aren’t premium passengers with United Airlines, with whom we’ll be flying, although we once were. We haven’t flown UA in years, and do not have any of their miles. So for us, the cost to upgrade from economy to Economy Plus was several hundred dollars and to upgrade to First, over $1,200. We decided to take our chances and spend the money on a better hotel and more theater.

I’ll report back on how this 5,000 plus mile journey in UA Economy works out.

Why does this look to be an industry trend?

USA Today is reporting information from American Express Business Travel Monitor, saying that as air travel becomes more expensive, passengers are choosing to upgrade less often than before. Will this be an industry trend? If our plans are an example, I’d say the answer is yes, which will hit airlines hard.

The report says that the number of international business class seats is down 2 percent recently, compared with last year. At the same time, the number of first class seats sold for North American travel dropped from 4 percent to 3 percent. Since domestic First travel typically yields airlines hundreds of extra dollars per seat and international First yields thousands of extra dollars, if this trend continues, it will be yet another blow to the airlines’ coffers.

I think that we as passengers as well as the airlines are in uncharted waters.

I’ve been following a recent controversy between the Skin Cancer Foundation and Environmental Working Group over how sunscreens are tested. Beat of Hawaii previously wrote about sunscreens back in May.

According to the New York Times, the Skin Cancer Foundation, which also tests sunscreens for safety and effectiveness, complains that the testing done by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) is “junk science.”

EWG concurs that they are using their own system, inasmuch as no formalized standards of evaluation presently exist. EWG , however, questions the objectivity of the Skin Cancer Foundation by stating:

At a cost of $10,000 to the manufacturer, the Skin Cancer Foundation endorses sunscreen products based on an evaluation that fails to consider two critical factors: whether or not the product protects against UVA protection, and whether the ingredient soaks through the skin and raises health concerns.

Based on my read, it certainly appears that there is a conflict of interest vis-à-vis the Skin Cancer Foundation and the manufacturers who are footing the $10,000 bills.

Moreover the controversy speaks to the clear-cut need for a standardized system of evaluating sunscreens in relation to all aspects of their effectiveness and safety.

So where is the U.S. government when we really need them? The FDA has yet to approve a set of final sunscreen safety standards, a project which EWG says was begun three decades ago.

If and when they do, we understand the standard will likely remove the importance of current SPF ratings on sunscreens, and replace them with a new rating system.

One star would signify the sunscreen offers the lowest protection, while four stars would mean the highest level. It isn’t clear to me how product safety concerns will be addressed by the FDA standards.

As EWG points out, “with more than a million cases of skin cancer diagnosed each year, people can’t afford to wait any longer.”

I concur and again suggest you check the EWG’s Skin Deep database, in order to find safe and effective sunscreens.

Back in June, I mentioned mentioned TripHub, a site which I’d used previously for group trip planning.

Well frankly I haven’t used it in a while, and so was sad to see a post on TechCrunch today, which lead me to TripHub’s site:

“TripHub’s trip planning service will no longer be available after Friday August 22, 2008….”What happened?” There is no single, simple answer to this question. Certainly we made mistakes, and unfortunately we were impacted by factors beyond our control including the current economic environment and state of the travel industry….”

I’m sorry to see TripHub go, but at the same time I’m not surprised.  They simply ran out of money, and there was nothing adequately distinguishing about it to attract either users or investors.  There are just too many Web 2.0 travel sites, and TripHub won’t be the last one to close.

In this final part of our four-part series, I’ll both explore some remaining clauses as well as other types of coverage and policies.

The first topic is something we don’t want to think about. What happens if I don’t make it back or if some of my parts are missing? The words I’m avoiding here are “death” and “dismemberment.” Insurance companies look at both similarly. While the chance of this happening is rare, you may want to check and see how policies cover this.

Accidental death coverage comes in several parts, based on the cause, and may be included as part of a package plan. Check for limitations or exclusions that may apply.

• Accident coverage typically extends for a pre-determined period (may be up to one year), if it occurred while on your covered trip. This provides no coverage for illness.
• Common carrier includes public transportation, other than commercial flights, and is sometimes a part of the accident coverage above.
• Commercial flight may be part of accident coverage or a separate coverage entirely. It sometimes covers charter flights, and while enroute to or from, or while within airports. You may have an option to increase the amount of coverage, typically up to $500,000, for an additional fee.

Policy Fulfillment.

This is how your policy gets delivered. Policies bought online typically only offer the option of emailing you the policy.

Other Types of Coverage.

There are many other types of trip insurance options, some of which may be available options as part of a trip package. Here are some of them:

• Umbrella. For an additional payment, this coverage can raise the limits of a number of other parts of the insurance package.
• Roadside assistance. This can include flat tire replacement, towing, fuel and oil delivery, locksmithing, etc.
• Itinerary changes. Protects you in the event a provider schedule change impacts your ability to take part in other separately booked activites.

Other policy types.

Also remember that there are different types of insurance other than trip packages. These can be for specific purposes, instead of or in addition to a trip package, and can extend the coverage options available to you. Some of these include:

• Flight accident policies.
• Medical evacuation policies.
• Multi-trip policies.
• Travel medical-only policies.
• Business travel policies.

I plan to write yet another post on travel insurance, not as part of this series. In that I’ll share what my personal experiences have been with travel insurance, what’s worked and what hasn’t.

I hope this series on travel insurance will prove useful to you, now or over time. Here’s wishing you safe and healthy travels!

I’m prone to seasickness (though not to airsickness). Sitting in the back seats of cars and buses doesn’t leave me feeling all that great either. How about you?

If you’re bound for Hawaii, the water starts getting rough here, generally about October. Today’s post might help if you’re planning on any of the following:

• Hawaii Superferry
• Na Pali boat tours
• Mainland to Hawaii cruises
• NCL Inter-Island cruises

As for my own experience, we recently took an Alaska cruise which started in California. The trip up to Alaska was beyond rough. I was in bed and drugged for the first two days after applying a Scopalomine patch. In short, I was miserable, and as a result, so were my traveling companions.

We are now planning a cruise across the infamously rough Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand this Fall. I’m really determined to enjoy myself, not get seasick, and not spend my cruise time in bed and/or drugged.

Here’s a list of what I’ve tried that hasn’t been very satisfactory:

1. Scopalomine patch. This took too long to work, and really should be started well in advance of rough sea conditions. I never felt quite right until I took it off.
2. Dramamine. These should be called sleeping pills, given how drowsy they make me.
3. Bonine. Better than dramamine, but still completely unacceptable in terms of how they leave me feeling and how ineffective they have been.
4. Wrist pressure bands. The manual bands that have what feels like a marble inside that presses on the inner wrist. These just did nothing in my experience.
5. Ginger candy. Tastes great, but doesn’t do a thing to alleviate my seasickness.

In preparation for our upcoming trip, I’ve started reading all of the forums again, including Cruise Critic and Frommers.

Here’s a list of what I’m planning to do next:

1. Follow the ocean conditions closely using this oceanographic site. That way I can know what is coming, and plan my action plan accordingly. If I’d seen what was ahead when we sailed to Alaska, I’d have used the Scop patch sooner, and it might have worked better.
2. Relief Band. I’m really excited (and hopeful) to try this. This is an electronic, battery operated adjustable stimulator designed to prevent motion sickness (and other kinds of nausea). It has very favorable reviews in the forums, so, for $80, I’m going to give this a try. The only real negative things I read are that some people are annoyed by the constant tingling feeling in your hand it produces. But I’ll take tingling over nausea in a heartbeat.

I’ll let you know how my new plan works out.

In the meantime, what have you tried, and what works for you and what doesn’t? I’m anxiously awaiting your input and suggestions.