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FITA Travel News Volume 3 Issue 5 Visit FITA @ www.fita.org and carlson wagonlit travel @ www.carlsonwagonlit.com AIRLINE NEWS
The new Beijing Capital Airport debuts.
The airport, located 18 miles (28 km) northeast of center city, formally
opened on November 1 with China Southern Airlines, China’s largest ROAD WARRIOR RESOURCES A new international guide to airports available. Looking for an office during a long airport layover or a place to get slides made for a last-minute presentation? Air Travel Card has published a new worldwide edition of The Business Travel Airport Directory -- A Practical Guide to Airport Business Centers and Airport Clubs. The directory provides the terminal locations of all business centers and airline clubs at the 100 airports it covers. Each listing offers detailed information about a wide range of business services, including the availability and size of conference rooms, inbound and outbound facsimile services, computer and secretarial services, photocopy services, currency exchange, overnight delivery services and notary public services. For information, click on www.air-travel-card.com. City Guides without the heft. Aramis Communications, the developer of travel applications for handheld devices like the PalmPilot and Palm III organizers, has a new product for road warriors: the Aramis City Guide for the Palm OS platform. This $18 software “solution” offers travel information, from local restaurant reviews to current enter- tainment listings, for major international business centers (London, Paris, Rome) and seven U.S. cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC.). For information, click on www.aramis-inc.com Surf the web at 35,000 feet. Inflightonline.com, the world's first provider of in-flight Internet and intranet services, has announced a strategic alliance with Lycos, the Internet search engine, to provide intranet and Internet services to airline passengers. Inflightonline will use airborne data servers linked to existing seat-back telephone handsets to deliver this service. The connection from server to seat will offer free intranet shopping and browsing, as well as speedy access to the Internet. Inflightonline is currently in negotiations with three major airlines and plans to begin service as soon as April 2000. TRAVEL TIPS Easy access to e-mail. Want to check up on your e-mail from your ISP account when you’re overseas but don’t have your laptop with you? Go to www.mailstart.com, enter your e-mail address and password, and the program will instantly retrieve your messages on whatever computer you happen to be using. Keep in mind, however, that if you intend to send or retrieve confidential information to/from an unknown server, you may be better off waiting until you have a more secure line. “Threshold” fees for calls from hotel rooms jump. Surf the web in your hotel room, or spend a lot of time retrieving and replying to e-mail on-line? Even if you use a local or toll-free dial-up number, you may end up paying more than you expect. Several hotel companies have begun charging up to 10 cents a minute for calls longer than 20 or 30 minutes. One way to avoid or minimize these fees is to retrieve messages, log off, reply off line and reconnect. Some hotels offer a daily access fee for high-speed lines. At Hilton, for instance, guests can opt for an unlimited access for $9.95/day. The service will be available at 130 properties worldwide by 2Q 2000, a Hilton spokesperson said. Safeguard those PDAs. Don’t be too cavalier about the security of your PDA/Pocket Organizer, especially if you’ve entered all sorts of sensitive information--credit card numbers, bank account numbers, telephones security codes, personal identification information, etc. If your PDA falls into the hands of a skilled thief, you may be in for months of mischief. Treat your palmtop with the same care as you do your laptop. Security experts suggest the following:
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