Increasingly Empty Pockets? With much of the country experiencing record high prices at the pump, consumers are preparing for a long summer of increasing gas prices and seeking advice online about how to avoid taking a hit to their wallets. Recent searches on Yahoo! include best auto-alternatives for family trips and weekend getaways for summer from “Amtrak discounts” (spiking 107%), “bus tickets” (spiking 271%) and “Greyhound bus schedule tickets” (spiking more than 8,426%).

Looking for a cheap, weekend getaway destination? Whether interested in escaping to the beach (searches for “beach chairs” are up 220%), on a rustic camping trip (Yogi Bear Campgrounds up 309%) or in celebrating the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War (“historic travel” up more than 500%), there is something for every traveler this summer, but it is clear from online searches that it must be cheap. General thriftiness is a reoccurring theme this year as searches for “cheap travel” are spiking more than 314%, “cheap holidays” up 269% and “low air fares” spiking 366% this week on Yahoo! Travel.

According to Yahoo! Travel, Top Searched Destinations are:

1. Mexico
2. Bahamas
3. Jamaica
4. Hawaii
5. London
6. Caribbean
7. France
8. Las Vegas
9. North Carolina
10. New Orleans

According to Yahoo! Travel, Top Searched Beach Destinations include:

·         Nag’s Head (searches are up 585%)

·         Nantucket (searches are up 520%)

·         Florida Keys (searches are up 49%)

·         North Carolina Beaches (searches are up 40%)

·         Mackinac Island (searches are up 20%)

Road Tripping: Some searches on Yahoo! suggest that people plan to head out in the family car this holiday season with “printable maps” spiking 213%, “driving directions maps” spiking 51% and “mileage calculator” spiking 42% this week.  In honor of these travelers, Yahoo! Travel editor, Deborah Hopewell identifies the must-take road trips that are realistic and easily accessible for people across the country from the coasts all the way to the plains.

Five Best Summer Road Trips According to Yahoo! Travel:

1.       Black Hills of South Dakota – Iconic Mount Rushmore is the big-name attraction, but a drive through the granite spires and pines of Black Hills includes  everything from Wild West gold-rush kitsch (Deadwood), free-ranging wildlife (bison, big horn sheep, prairie dogs) and scenic day hikes to stretch road-weary legs (try Cathedral Spires Trail on the Needles Highway).

2.       California’s Big Sur Coast – Start with a visit to the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, where you’ll learn more about the sea life that live just below the vertigo-inducing cliffs you’re about to drive along, then end with a visit to the fabulous Hearst Castle at San Simeon.

3.       Overseas Highway, Florida – From Key Largo, near Miami, a series of bridges and causeways means you’re driving over beautiful blue waters for more than a hundred miles, until the end of the road in Key West, the southernmost point in the continental U.S.

4.       Blue Ridge Parkway – From Shenandoah National Park to Great Smoky National Park in North Carolina, every twist in the road reveals stunning mountain and valley vistas. Charming inns and great restaurants dotting its 470 miles make it worthwhile to take your time.

5.       Texas Hill Country – From Austin, south to San Antonio  then west to Junction, the Hill Country is chock full of colorful Texas towns. Don’t miss authentic German food (and beer!) in Fredericksburg, country music in Gruene, and any number of rivers to inner-tube down when it comes time to cool your heels.

According to Yahoo! Travel, Top Searched National and State Parks include: 

·         Grand Teton National Park (searches are up 1258%)

·         Shenandoah National Park (searches are up 640%)

·         Yellowstone Park (searches are up 322%)

·         State Parks (searches are up 139%)

·         Ohio State Parks (searches are up 102%)

According to Yahoo! Travel, Top Searched Historical Travel Destinations include:

·         Fort Sumter (searches are up 1520%)

·         Greenfield Village (searches are up 884%)

·         Gettysburg (searches are up 220%)

Yahoo! Travel has made it easier for travelers to find the best travel deals with new exclusive deals and offers.

To help me decide between the two destinations, I started my research on Yahoo! Search. A single search for Phuket pulls up the below shortcut.

The beach looks so serene. Clicking through to the slideshow, there’s a number of pictures to view, including user-generated candid photos from the Flickr community. The mix of hotel and commercial photos along with individual’s personal experiences gives me a couple different perspectives on the location. I can just see myself sitting in those lounge chairs!

Switching gears a bit, I tried a search for Acapulco and got the following result.

I’m definitely tempted now. I wonder if Acapulco is better for the adventure seekers. Clicking on the top rated attraction — based on total ratings and user reviews written — the daring jump from a 110-foot cliff in Quebrada sounds intriguing. A bit scary, I’ll admit, but intriguing nonetheless. The user reviews included on each attraction also give me a better sense of whether I would like the destination or not. I mean, what better way to find out how a place measures up than by hearing from folks who’ve experienced it?

I definitely need to read up on reviews and activities before making my decision, but having the Travel Destination Shortcut makes the process that much easier.

With this release, we’ve got shortcuts for hundreds of the most popular and unique US and international destinations and we’re working to grow that into the thousands over time. So where do you want to take your next vacation — Paris, Hanoi or Sydney, perhaps? Start your research on Yahoo! Search and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Lingxian Ding
Yahoo! Search

The full capability isn’t in alpha yet, but it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves. You can play with a couple of the map prototypes here and here.

Also check out the Yahoo! Local/Maps Blog for more detail.

Raj Gossain
Yahoo! Search

We introduced Trip Planner a few months ago – it?s a tool that simplifies the research, planning and sharing of trips online so that you can create a customized, printable take-along travel guide. It allows you to tag information found on Yahoo! Travel and the rest of the Web and bring it into one slick AJAX interface. You can choose to share your trip with anyone – from one friend to the whole world. If there is another user?s shared trip that you like, you can copy it and build from there instead of starting your travel planning process from scratch. The result of this online community sharing travel experiences is a living atlas of travel information for users to add and take from.

New Features Galore

• My favorite new feature is the Trip Planner explore option where the top trip plans from thousands of destinations, as chosen by other Yahoo! users, are plotted on an interactive map using the new Yahoo! Maps AJAX API. You can pan and zoom to find the trip that?s right for you.

  

• The Trip Journal interface allows users to share their first-person, post-trip narrative, the good and the bad, with fellow travelers. The Trip Album within the Journal is fully connected with Flickr, so your photos can be displayed with just a few clicks.

  

• Users have the ability to rate Trip Plans based on how helpful they are, and to bookmark their favorite trips for easy reference
• Trips are connected to the user?s Yahoo! 360 profile so when you?re browsing for a trip you can get more info on the trip author
• Trip items can be viewed in variety of formats including plotted on Satellite, Hybrid and Street Level maps
• Recommendations from Yahoo! Travel Guides for hotels, things to do, restaurants, shopping and entertainment are automatically served up for users who want easily accessible information as they add new objects to their trip plans.

Starting from the Search Box
You?ll now also be able to connect with Yahoo! Trip Planner directly from Yahoo! Search. By entering your destination + the word ?trips? (e.g. Atlanta trips or Las Vegas trips) you can link directly to the top community ranked Trip Plans for that destination in Yahoo! Trip Planner.

We hope you like what you see! Check it out and let us know what you think. You can post either here, or on the Yahoo! Trip Planner forum.

Vivek Hariharan
Yahoo! Trip Planner

We ask a lot out of that one search box, and travel is a good example of our evolving search needs. You can get maps, weather, news and more directly from the search box, and now you’ll had direct access to flight and hotel pricing and availability via Yahoo! FareChase, a pioneer of travel search.

Yahoo! FareChase (which is now in general availability) is a travel search engine that searches across many airline sites like AA.com, hotel sites like Sheraton.com, and on-line travel agency websites such as Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com, to give searchers a comprehensive set of prices and availability for flights and hotel rooms that is available on the web. Now with a simple web search, you can see what’s available across multiple sites without a separate visit to each site. And, the new satellite imagery we just launched in maps is also available on Yahoo! FareChase. :-)

So how does this all work?

Let’s say you’re in California and you’re planning a trip to New York this spring. You type in ‘Flights to New York’ into Yahoo! Search, and here’s what you see:

If you are logged in, we pick up your location based on your user preference. What you see above are the best prices for flights to New York from your area. You can then add more information, such as travel dates, directly on the search engine results page to refine your search.

You can do the same for hotels using the keyword ‘compare’. Type in ‘Compare Las Vegas Hotels’ into Yahoo! Search and you’ll see the best prices and dates for different hotel classes.

If you were to click on the links above you’d get a map-centric hotel search view on Yahoo! FareChase, which will help you get a sense of where hotels are located, such as on the Strip.

What else. You might want to check out other user’s travel plans who are considering staying at the same hotels as you from integration with the Trip Planner beta. This’ll help you get a sense of what other people think of the hotels you’re considering, and you might get some ideas for cool stuff to do on your trip.

Please give the feature a try and see how it works for you, we welcome your thoughts and comments below.

Fiona Lake Waslander
Yahoo! Travel

Here are the highlights:

Comprehensive Nationwide Satellite Imagery Coverage
Wall-to-wall coverage within the lower 48 states in the US. We are going for the best coverage nationwide, from the streets of New York to every inch of Redding, CA.

Global Satellite Imagery
The product features global images at 15 meters per pixel (zoom level 5, medium resolution), which basically lets you find and see every city, town, and major land feature in the world at medium resolution.

Global Maps
We’re releasing maps and overlays at medium resolution for the whole world as well. This should help you view not only the suburbs of Bangkok, Thailand, but also help see the context of the imagery in hybrid mode.

APIs
The new imagery and global maps are available for API developers on the Yahoo! Developer Network. So whether you’re new to the world of mashups or an experienced hacker, there is no better time to show off what you can do.

Better Views
In addition to getting all the data we can, we’re processing the satellite imagery to make the visuals more aesthetically pleasing for users. We’re blending away seam lines and normalizing the color pallet to create a continuous plane of imagery.

That’s it for now. Let us know what you think, and expect more updates soon.

Thanks!

Michael Lawless and Vince Maniago
Yahoo! Maps

That’s the idea behind Trip Planner, now available in beta on Yahoo! Travel. It is part of our continuing effort to help people find, use, share and expand upon the knowledge on the Web.

Trip Planner is a new tool that helps you organize your travel research from Yahoo! Travel and all over the Web to a trip plan. Save hotels, attractions, and useful web sites into your trip plan, then add your own notes, tags, driving directions and more. When you’re done, you can share your trip with a few friends or with the entire Yahoo! Travel community.

You can already search for some pretty interesting trips by description, author, tags, and more, whether you’re a foodie visiting San Francisco or a newlywed headed for Seychelles. And because the people creating these trips are the millions of Yahoo! users in our network’there could potentially be as many types of trips as there are types of travelers.

Here’s an example of a search for ‘San Francisco’:

Try out Trip Planner and let us know what you think!

Katherine Tom
Yahoo! Travel Editor