Recently, my husband received an offer to interview for a job in Tampa, Florida. Not being frequent travelers, nor experts of the Tampa area, we didn’t have a solid grasp of where to find information that would enable us to make a good decision regarding reasonable airfare and car rental for his trip. We also wanted to know as much as we could find out about the nature of the job itself. The following is a description of how we conducted our search for this information.
We began our quest online. My husband focused on finding information about the particular position for which he was interviewing as well as general information about the hiring company. He found a lot of useful information on the company’s website that told him about their current work and plans for the future. My husband also spoke with my dad, who works in a similar field. He was able to give him more details concerning hiring practices and policies. My dad also suggested booking the car rental through USAA, of which we are members and through which we can receive discounts.
My job was to figure out travel arrangements. I started by thinking about where I had heard reliable travel information in the past. We frequently listen to Clark Howard on the radio. He is a consumer advocate who works out of Atlanta, Georgia and frequently talks about travel deals on his show. I went to his website and looked at his page regarding travel. Most of the information was specific to Atlanta, but it did point me in the direction of Travelocity, a free, online travel agency that allows for easy comparison between deals on airfare, car rental and hotel accommodations. By plugging the address of the interview location into Google Maps and looking at the map, I determined that the closest airport was Tampa International. Travelocity allowed me to plug in the date of his trip and compare flight times, carriers and prices. I selected the criteria that best met his needs, booked a flight and moved on to car rental.
Through USAA’s website, I learned that we could receive discounts through the rental car companies Avis, Hertz and Budget. I then went to the Tampa International Airport website and determined that all three car companies had services available there. I chose Avis, because they offered USAA members the largest discount and then sent the information to my husband so he could sign up for a car.
After booking all of the travel arrangements, I was talking to my dad again and he asked which car company we had ended up selecting. When I told him Avis and the price, he was surprised. He told me that Avis is typically the most expensive of the three companies. After talking further, I realized that I had never compared rates between the car companies, I had just selected Avis because they gave the biggest discount to USAA members. It turns out that they have the biggest discount because they have the biggest initial price! After learning this, we decided that for future car rentals, we will need to remember to compare rates between the companies in order to choose the most reasonably priced car rental company.
Search terms and Questions:
In my search, I relied on Google to find the locations of all of the websites I used. In the Google Search box, I typed:
Clark Howard (www.clarkhoward.com)
Travelocity (www.travelocity.com)
Google Maps (www.maps.google.com)
USAA (www.usaa.com)
Tampa International Airport (www.tampaairport.com)
Avis (www.avis.com)
Hertz (www.hertz.com)
Budget (www.budgetcarrental.com)
Questions I asked:
To my husband…
What is the address of the interview location?
What day and time are the interview?
What times do you want to arrive/depart Tampa?
To myself…
Who can I ask about travel?
What websites would have the information about airfare, car rental, and maps?
To my dad…
Do you have any tips for booking airfare or rental cars?
Where do I look on the USAA website for information about discount car rental offers?
Searching Satisfaction:
I was pretty satisfied with my search because it allowed me to find what I needed. Knowing what I know now about the car rental prices, I would remember to compare between the companies next time so that I could get an even better deal. I would have gone back to do this for this search process, but by the time we compared prices, the date of the trip was closer and prices for car rental from all of the companies had gone up higher than what my husband had booked.
I felt confident in my information sources because I know that Clark Howard is a reliable consumer advocate. I have listened to him assist other people on the radio and on TV and am confident in his strong reputation in the financial world. I also knew my dad was a good resource because he has been in the same field as my husband for his entire career and knows a lot about the different agencies within this field.
I believe that my information gap has been filled overall because I was able to get the amount of information needed to accomplish my goal of booking airfare and travel for my husband’s trip. The search has ended because we are confident in our results and are also out of time, (his trip is this week).
What I Learned About Myself:
Like some others in our class have mentioned, I didn’t realize how much I relied on Google to search for information. Even though I had a clear idea of the website I was looking for, I didn’t necessarily know the exact address, so it was helpful to be able to search for it in Google. Something else I learned about myself is that I think I need to take breaks amidst long searches. I think that by the time I reached the car rental part of my search, I was just ready to be done with it. This feeling may have easily contributed to my oversight in not comparing the car rental companies against each other. I think this is something good to keep in mind when helping library patrons, because sometimes too much information, even good information, can be overwhelming. Anything we as librarians can do to cut down search time, whether it be through web quests or pathfinders, etc., would be very beneficial to the end-user.
Class Correlation:
One element of my search made me recall our class discussion about Adler and the arbitrariness of alphabetization. The car companies in my search were listed alphabetically: Avis, Budget, and then Hertz. Though I did actually read the amounts of discounts for each to make my decision, I do wonder to what extent I and others visiting the USAA site might be influenced to choose Avis just because it is listed first.
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