Jim Eagles: The high-tech holiday hunter

The internet has been a great boon to travellers, allowing us to dig out information, find out about places we want to visit, compare package tours, book our own holidays and even save money in the process.

In the United States, where the switch to the internet is greatest, roughly one-third of all bookings are made online.

The trend to online bookings is greatest when it comes to air tickets, with many airlines offering cheaper internet discounts to encourage customers to eliminate the travel agent and book directly.

But many people still find it easier to go to a traditional travel agent when it comes to pulling together a complex holiday arrangement involving air tickets, rental cars, hotels and tours.

My experience has been mixed. When I've been lucky enough to have a good travel agent I have been happy to let them make the arrangements, knowing they will do a better job than I could.

But when the travel agents have been unable to offer anything beyond a typical package deal then it has been great to book the holiday I really want over the net.

What I've never been sure about is whether it really is cheaper to do it for yourself.

My sesquipedalian logophile GP, Dr Steve Culpan, is a real internet enthusiast so when he planned a holiday in Italy he naturally turned to the web in the expectation it would not only be satisfying to make the arrangements himself but also cheaper. Here is his report on the experience:

Pasta in the village piazza, daily gelati and dinners on the portico. A friend was offering me a great deal for 20 nights in his rented villa in Umbria. Now all I needed was a return air ticket.

I would learn a few Italian phrases and gestures, avoid the Beginners' Course for Bottom Pinching and adapt my morning shaving ritual to develop the dark, brooding Latin look.

Stimulated by my reverberating Pavarotti imitation in the shower, I then thought to save even more money by using Google to look, and the internet to book. I would get the best bargain airfares and car rentals, cut out the middle man and avoid fallible humans.

First, I decided to use my Emirates air points and obtain special extra points for using their online booking system.

The website told me I could get seats Auckland to Rome and back with no trouble. But I rather liked the idea of a stopover in London. And when I tried to book Rome to London it kept on saying "no seats available".

As I use wireless internet access, I discovered trick number one, booking online at the same time as telephoning the Emirates booking office.

This established that the reason the online system couldn't find me Rome-London seats was that they don't fly that route.

Still, I was also able to double-check the best Auckland-Rome prices and still got my extra air points for booking and paying online.

But I still needed to get from Rome to London. I decided to Google for cheap return flights. This brought up 2,700,064 hits.

I avoided the sponsored links. They pay to be at the top of the page and are not there because the online consumer hits them more often than lesser sites.

Trick number two is to look through the first 10-20 sites for one containing the phrase "useful sites".

From this I found the clues that led to the best site for the biggest range of air flights and cheapest prices, which proved to be http://travel.kelkoo.co.uk.

But to pay for the airfare I had to fax a photocopy of the front and back of my credit card plus a driver's licence or passport to an E-Bookers UK international number. What financial neanderthals!

Over the next three weeks I had emails from nine different Indian gentlemen and women (presumably in an IT sweat-shop close to the source of the Ganges) none of whom had either read their colleagues' emails or my replies.

After doggedly persevering with a further two faxes and emails I finally booked, paid, and confirmed British Airways.

Trick three is to avoid the E-bookers payment system.

Now for a rental car. Of course I dismissed out of hand the big names like Avis or Hertz as they would be too dear.

"Cheap hire cars Italy" on Google also went past the two million hits, some in British pounds, some in euros, some in US dollars. All had variable insurance waivers and that worrying term, "local country insurance excesses also apply", but none offered an explanation of what these charges might be.

In the end I doodlingly looked up the Avis site and - shock, horror - they were as cheap as any Rento Al Dento.

Better still I went to the local office, had the car booked and paid in four minutes, and they were able to find the exact insurance excesses for Italy by a phone call as I waited.

Trick four, surprisingly, is don't always go past the obvious and the international companies.

Still, at this stage I feel like a real man, as though I have single-handedly killed a large sharp-tusked mastodon to feed my famished family and tribe, back in their icicled cave.

I chatted to a travel agent friend about my triumphs. He has a very good memory and rings me the next day to say he could have done the same thing and saved a further $180. He even sends me the tentative bookings and prices by email.

It is like my thankless tribe telling me they hate the taste of mastodon. I guess trick five must be that it isn't necessarily cheaper to avoid your local travel agent.

Never mind. Soon, I will be going off to laze with my frescobaldi, pecorino, pesto and ciabatta under the Umbrian sun.

While I am there, I will invent a new square object to put on bikes. I will call it a "wheel".