Plan a Summer Vacation

By Elizabeth Wasserman

It's June. School lets out any day now. And you haven't even started planning the family's summer vacation? Don't fret quite yet. In a quick hour or two on the Internet, you can plan a last-minute getaway, book airfare, hotels, car rentals and find fun family activities. There are even eleventh-hour summer travel bargains to be had -- if you know where to look.

The variety of online travel options these days means that you don't need a travel agent. Take Mary Foley, a mother of three from Annandale, Va. She turned to the Internet to plan her family's upcoming summer trip to Montana. Her first stop was Slow Travel, an online community for people -- and families -- who enjoy traveling by staying put in one place most of the time and exploring. The site convinced her to avoid hotels and search for more homelike vacation rentals. She booked two log cabins near to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks.

"I thought it would be fun for the kids and get them more interested in the trip," she says. So Foley showed her kids online pictures of a nearby buffalo ranch where they saw visitors feeding baby buffalo with bottles of milk. Her kids were sold on the trip and so was she.

Here's how you can quickly plan your own summer vacation:

Explore popular online travel sites
The first step is to scout out travel destinations -- and possible last-minute travel bargains -- on travel web sites that feature tailored information for families. Many of the most popular travel sites feature special sections just for traveling with kids. Search Expedia for family travel and find such themed vacations as the "Sound of Music Tour" of Austria, the "Harry Potter Castle Tour" of England or the "Ultimate Penguin Experience" in Melbourne, Australia.

Orbitz also has an online travel guide for families, where you can find "hot deals" to popular travel destinations, such as a $99 per night rate at the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego or a $701 three-day travel package to Bermuda, including airfare and hotel. Frommer's features articles about visiting historic sites in Washington, D.C. with children, the best way to see Alaska's wildlife, and deals like "More Bang for your Baht in Thailand," airfare and hotel for six nights from $799.

For the independent traveler who likes to piece together accommodations and adventures instead of booking a "package," there are other resources to comb online.

Pamela Lanier's Family Travel Guides has searchable articles, bed and breakfast listings and suggestions for how you can keep the tab for food low and the offerings healthy. BabyCenter provides links to a range of accommodations, from campgrounds to dude ranches to home-swapping, in addition to links to places where you can rent strollers and other gear. On the other hand, on TripAdvisor you can research popular or unusual family vacation destinations, such as Orlando versus Roswell, New Mexico, but also encourages fellow travelers to write frank reviews of accommodations.

Involve the kids
Once you've picked a destination, now is the time to get buy-in from the rest of your family. Unless you're hitting theme parks that they know and love, sometimes children -- especially teens -- may burst your bubble with their lack of enthusiasm for learning about desert wildlife or visiting Civil War battlefields. Fortunately, the web can help.

A growing number of sites offer "kid pages," special sections designed to entertain, educate and inform youngsters about travel.

For instance, if camping is your thing, a web site called Go Camping has games, safety tips and information on bugs and animals your kids might encounter. Or the U.S. National Parks Service has sections for kids to teach them about archaeology, Civil War history and story books about the Mojave National Desert. Even the Tower of London has a kids' tour led by a cartoon raven that supposedly lives in the castle, which dates back 1,000 years.

Check local attractions web sites' for these child-oriented pages that will get your kids psyched about the trip.

Avoid snags and get good deals
There are definitely bargains to be had for summer travel -- even if you're booking this late in the season. Many travel and airline sites allow you to sign up for email newsletters that alert you to sales for your favorite destinations. In addition, sometimes it's worth trying to negotiate over email with an innkeeper if you will be staying for several nights to see if you can get a discount.

Another piece of advice: Sometimes it might be worth double-checking airline fares by telephone because some carrier web sites don't make it easy for the average customer to find discounted flights.

"The most important thing," says Michele Perry, communications director for TripAdvisor, "is to do your homework."

True, booking a vacation online can be deceptively easy. With a few clicks and a credit card number, you can book a multi-thousand-dollar package in minutes. But the agreements you make in cyberspace hold the same weight as a contract you sign in ink.

Experts advise you to always read the fine print on any travel web site. And print out receipts. "Carefully review the cancellation policy," says Pamela Lanier, the travel author of 13 guidebooks and founder of Family Travel Guides. "What if you have to cancel because of illness or a natural disaster?"

To make sure you're getting what you're paying for, also search the web for reviews of hotels published both in travel guides and by fellow travelers. TripAdvisor not only allows travelers to post candid opinions, rating accommodations on such factors as cleanliness, but also lets them post photographs.

When Mary Foley was booking those log cabins in Montana, she also contacted the local chambers of commerce to check if there had been any complaints against the proprietors. She got glowing reviews. And that's when she felt totally comfortable booking her family vacation online -- and looking forward to the fun and memories that would come with it.

Elizabeth Wasserman is a freelance writer and editor based in Fairfax, Va. She writes for a variety of publications, including Congressional Quarterly, Inc magazine, and she edits the online publication CIO Strategy Center.