Book a room on the Web

Whether bleary-eyed from business or lotion-smeared for vacation, travelers can now fire up their laptops to make hotel reservations through the Net.

A number of hotel heavyweights have thrown their support behind TravelWeb, a Web site that accepts reservations for more than 6,000 hotels and 1.7 million rooms worldwide. The participating hotel chains include Best Western International, Days Incorporated, Hilton Hotels, Hyatt, La Quinta Inn, Ramada, and Westin Hotels and Resorts.

Users logging on to the Web site can peruse color photographs of hotel rooms before they pay, as well as search for hotels by location, price, and amenities. Because the system needs credit card numbers to book the room, users are required to have a Web browser that supports SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer.