NYT Travel: Tours on Foot Planned Online

New York Times
September 19, 2004
PRACTICAL TRAVELER

Tours on Foot Planned Online
By BOB TEDESCHI


Pictu
http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/...l/19prac.1.jpg
Caption:
Margaret Riegel


DAVID STEFANCIC, an associate professor of history at Saint Mary's
College in Notre Dame, Ind., has for the last decade had both the good
and bad fortune of leading walking tours of students in European
cities as director of the college's European Summer Study Program.

Good fortune because, as he says, "with walking tours you can stand in
a place and really appreciate what happened there." Bad fortune
because he's had to plan the tours himself to keep costs down and
allow flexibility.

Books can help in planning, but if you want to customize a walk, or if
you want to avoid buying lots of books or a trip to the library, the
Web is a better way to go. But while the Web makes most travel-related
research easier, there are few sites that provide truly informative
and well-organized self-guided tours.

With the notable exception of Travelocity.com, the big Internet travel
agencies provide little such help, perhaps because they can't make
money by giving away itineraries. Meanwhile, walking tour companies
understandably refuse to describe their tours in detail.

"You have to pick out bits and pieces from different sites," Dr.
Stefancic said. "There's no way to find the ideal walking tour for
yourself in one place."

That is certainly true for someone trying to tailor walking tours to
the tastes of 50 people, as Dr. Stefancic does, but those traveling
alone or in smaller groups can sometimes find a match on the Web sites
of well-known travel publishers, like Frommers.com,
Travelandleisure.com, Fodors.com, and Concierge.com (Condé Nast
Traveler).

Of those, Frommer's is the most generous with walking tour
information. According to David Lytle, Frommers.com's editorial
producer, the Web site lists up to four self-guided tours for 111 of
the most popular cities covered in its publications. To find the
tours, go to a city's overview page, and look for the link toward the
bottom of the page, in red.

Suggestions and Maps

The walks generally take up to three hours, and include suggestions on
places to eat and rest. Unlike some sites, Frommer's gives a brief
overview of the tour, along with start and finish locations, and the
best and worst times to begin.

For the Vieux-Montreal tour, for instance, readers are told to avoid
the walk in the evenings, when museums and historic places are closed,
and when the Rue St.-Paul is "a little rowdy with barhoppers."

A handful of Frommers.com walking tours also have maps. The
"Renaissance Rome" tour map, for example, (found separately under Rome
Maps) labels each of the 29 suggested stops, and includes two
suggestions for places to stop and eat.

Visitors to Travelocity.com will find similar walking tours - minus
the maps, curiously. Like Expedia, Orbitz and other online agents,
Travelocity relies on travel publishers for destination-specific
content. Expedia, though, doesn't include walking tours, and Orbitz's
offering in the Day Trips & Walks sections of certain destinations is
only marginally useful for generating ideas.

Fodors.com also includes self-guided walking tours, although there are
fewer than on Frommer's. According to Daniel Mangin, Fodors.com's
editorial director, the site has roughly 50 walking tours that are
listed as such, "with another 25 or so that are part of larger
itineraries or themed articles."

Fodor's will add another 50 tours by the end of this month, from its
2005 guidebooks, Mr. Mangin said. Most of the site's tours are gleaned
from the company's books, but there are some Web exclusives.

A recent example is the DaVinci Code Tours, which highlight the sites
mentioned in the popular novel. Found at the bottom of the Fodors.com
home page, the tours encompass Paris, Rome, London and Scotland, but
just the Rome and Paris sections are fitting for walking tours.

Mr. Mangin said he got the idea for the tours when he saw postings on
the Fodors.com message boards. "Now they're the most popular feature
on our site," he said.

One can also generate some good ideas for by visiting the Web sites
devoted to travel books, like "Walks Through Napoleon & Josephine's
Paris," by Diana Reid Haig. At www.napoleonandjosephinesparis.com
there is a new sample walking tour of stores and restaurants connected
to the famed couple and their family. The tour, at the bottom of the
site's home page, includes a stop at Odiot, Napoleon's official
silversmith.

Going High Tech

Outside the Internet, self-guided strolls are increasingly going high
tech, with audio CD guides available at a growing number of hotels,
museums and tourist offices. Perhaps the next breed of such guides is
in digital audio devices that have been primarily music repositories.

Discovery Walks (www.Discovery-Walk.com) provides a glimpse of this
trend. The company rents light, compact MP3 players that include 10
individual walks for $31.25 a day, including tax, at $1.25 to the
euro. Only Paris walks are offered so far, but the company is planning
a significant expansion.

In March, Discovery Walks will allow users to download tours directly
to their MP3 players, and the roster of cities will include New York,
London and Rome, as well as many Mediterranean cruise ports. Prices
have yet to be determined, but the port cities will include Venice,
Monte Carlo, Cannes and Barcelona.

According to Carey Clark, Discovery Walks' European managing director,
the company's scripts are overseen by Arthur Gillette, who has written
books on travel and education and, the company says, has helped create
historical walks for other companies.

Of course, different people define walking tours differently. For the
more ambitious, there are walks from city to city, with the help of
LonelyPlanet.com. The company's message board, the Thorn Tree, offers
a multitude of ideas.

Until August, the message boards were not easy to exploit because of
Lonely Planet's weak search function. Then it introduced a new site
search engine, making it much easier to find good recommendations.

Navigating through the categories sometimes works. On the Walking,
Trekking & Mountaineering branch of the Thorn Tree, a July posting
suggested a trek through the Cinque Terre region of the Italian coast,
describing "absolutely gorgeous scenery and great food."

While some bulletin board missives cannot be trusted, this posting, it
turns out, was from an employee of a tour company, Midnight Sun
Adventures, of New Jersey.

Dr. Stefancic, of Saint Mary's College, said he has also made use of
the Internet to change itineraries on the fly. While in Paris, for
instance, he has ducked into Internet cafes to check on possible
sights when he sensed that the current tour wasn't clicking with
students.

"They might not be interested in walking the steps of the French
revolution, but food was also a big part of the revolution, so you can
change the orientation to restaurants," Dr. Stefancic said. "You can
always get them interested in food."


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