lodging options Looking for something other than the standard business-style chain hotel? A Web site called Rentalo (www.rentalo.com) lets you search among 100,000 places to stay around the world—not only hotels but also villas, apartments, guest houses and B&Bs. The site lets you specify a variety of factors to narrow your search, including price, size and name, as well as amenity-based factors like the availability of Internet access, swimming pool, and so on. What might you find? Besides big convention hotels in New Orleans, Rentalo's inventory includes places like Villa Chez Nous, an historic five-room property on the edge of the French Quarter with rates of $85-$100.
airport hotels Many an early-morning departure would be more acceptable to the harried business traveler if he could stay at or near the airport the night before. That's the logic behind ParkSleepFly (www.parksleepfly.com), a Web site that lets you search for airport hotels with packages specially designed for business travel—providing not only accommodations and an airport transfer, but in many cases letting you park your car in the hotel's lot or garage for the duration of your trip.
dining tips The popular research site TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com) has added restaurant information to its extensive listings of travel background information. The site gathers together online articles, guidebook listings and consumer Web postings that provide evaluations of more than 40,000 restaurants around the U.S. As it does with its hotel index, the site ranks the popularity of restaurants in various cities based on the quantity of information available. The site said it expects to expand its restaurant listings in the months ahead to include foreign destinations as well.
shop and earn American Airlines has put together a new section of its company Web site where AAdvantage frequent flyer program members can earn miles for buying all sorts of consumer merchandise. It's called AAdvantage eShopping (www.aa.com/aadvantageeshopping), and it pays program members one mile for every dollar spent with participating merchants. More than 50 retailers with recognizable names are part of the program—companies like Best Buy, The Gap and Barnes & Noble.
u.s. low-fare airlines