Prisoner of the Web

I remember the good old days. It was back in 1999. We had a dial-up modem and a Dell desk top that had the screaming speed of 356 MHz, and we felt like the world was at our fingertips. Maybe it was the flush of first love, but every now and then I think back wistfully on the simplicity of that first bloom of searching and planning our travel adventures using the “world wide web”.

That was the year we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. To make it extra special, we rented a villa just outside of Siena, Italy and invited some friends and relatives to celebrate with us. We found the villa the old fashioned way in a full-color catalog, but many of the other components of the trip, we searched, shopped for and bought online.

It was a liberating experience! Using a meta search engine we located information about the villages of the Chianti region and the Tuscan countryside.  For an extension down to Rome and the Amalfi Coast I found websites that were full of information that helped us plan and make reservations for our stay. These were simple websites managed by inn keepers and local travel entrepreneurs.  Ah, those were the good old days, when you could type in the key words that took you to the information you were looking for rather than online travel agencies or even internet auction sites.   

Now the proliferation of information has brought more of the world to our fingertips, but the frustration with this is that now we need information filtered for our personal preferences and interests. And for me, I usually don’t start my travel shopping search with flights and hotels so most of the travel selling sites out there right now don’t work that well for me.  And while reviews on sites like Trip Advisor and Igougo are helpful, they too are becoming cluttered and hard to manage.

My once felt liberation in searching for travel options on the internet now more often than not feels more like imprisonment on the world wide web.