Travel Agents Make A Return Trip http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/23/travel-agents-make-a-return-trip/ Is the Best Travel Search Engine Around the Corner? http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/is-the-best-travel-search-engine-around-the-corner/ Shared Heritage Travel Itineraries http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/ American Journeys http://www.americanjourneys.org/ Better Bidding http://www.betterbidding.com/ In another time (before the late 1990s, let us say), going to a travel agent was quite an experience. You might enter a large office suite replete with colorful posters from Pan Am and Lufthansa, and there might even be a model of a 747 on the travel agent's desk, along with some other travel-related knick-knacks. Today, most trips are booked with a series of clicks online, and many wags predicted that the travel agent would soon go the way of the dodo. Part of the resurgence of the travel agent is due to an uptick in high-end travel and corporate bookings, while others just find the deluge of online material regarding hotel ratings, airline options, transportation connections, and so on to be just a bit overwhelming. Interestingly enough, a recent survey by the IBM Institute for Business Value confirmed that this is a real problem. The survey noted that it took the average person more than two hours to search and book travel online. Another thing that has aided the cause of real-life agents is the ability to connect with their clients via email, text messages, Twitter, and so on. For some posh travelers, this type of personal connection seems to make all the difference. The first link will take interested parties to a piece from this past Friday's New York Times about the rebirth of the travel agent, along with a few profiles of this new breed of travel expert. The second link will whisk visitors away to a piece from TIME's Kate Springer about the resurgence of the traditional travel agent. The third link will take users away to a great piece from the New York Times' own "Frugal Traveler," Seth Kugel. In this lively article, he talks about going to brick-and-mortar travel agents to see if they can get him the best prices on tickets to Croatia, So Paulo, and other destinations. The fourth link leads visitors to a wonderful collection of heritage travel itineraries created by the National Park Service that might inspire a future journey. Moving along, the fifth link will take users to the American Journeys homepage. Here they can look over 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, and will almost certainly decide to take several return visits. The final link will take the informed traveler to the Better Bidding website, which provides information about strategies and information about bidding for hotel rooms around the United States.