Those looking for information on hot destinations in the form of personal anecdotes can click on Concierge.com, where the recently unveiled “travelog” feature shifts the balance of power and makes the user the expert.

The site (www.concierge.com) is the online home for the well-established Conde Nast Traveler magazine, and offers readers stories by the site’s own cadre of experts, as well as photos and articles from the magazine. But three weeks ago, Concierge.com rolled out the Travelog, inviting visitors to create their own Web pages and share their stories and photos from personal travels.

The travelogs range from basic destination ratings to more thorough entries, including excerpts from journals, the trip’s hits and misses, and hotel reviews. The personal travelogs are then listed by destination, and are shared with site visitors, who can post comments or questions in response to the entries or photos.

“We feel that by being able to tap into the community, which has far broader experience than any one writer could have, we can give our users multiple points of view that would be helpful,” says Jonathan Fishel, general manager of Concierge.com. “We think it’ll become powerful over time.”

In one travelog, a New York couple wrote of their recent trip to Java and listed “discussing riots with a sexist political student” as their most memorable experience with a local. The couple also included colorful photos of sarongs, temples, and a live volcano.

Concierge.com, which boasts monthly traffic of 700,000 unique users since its launch in August 1999, also offers Insider Guides, written by correspondents in 10 different cities. The monthly updates highlight special events for travelers, such as holiday window dressing in New York City or dolphin watching off the coasts of Hong Kong.

According to Mr. Fishel, the correspondents write an average of 12 or 13 reviews of restaurants, nightlife venues, and hotels in their city. “They’ll be able to tell you that in April, these are the things you really should do in Barcelona, as if you had a friend in that city.”

My result? I picked up the phone. A lot.

Don’t get me wrong. In some ways, e-travel has advanced remarkably in the past year, offering everything from four-minute videos of hotel bathrooms to $25-a-day car rentals on the spur of the moment. And yet, I found that many sites still couldn’t get even the easy things right. Instead of lounging around improving my tan, I spent hours hunched over my computer in a hotel room trying to fix the messes my detailed surfing had wrought. True, I struck up warm e-mail relations with the concierge at Los Angeles’ Hotel Bel-Air. Not so for my relations with my brother-in-law, which cooled after our online theater and concert bookings failed to come through on a Saturday night.

And that dog park? I found that because it was on one Web site’s “Top 20″ list of things not to miss in Palm Springs — along with an air-conditioned bus tour of celebrities’ homes and a golf museum (featuring balls that date back to the 1800s).

Such problems may be one reason the online travel business, while growing, is nowhere near as big as the industry once hoped. Too many travelers have been frustrated by false promises of $199 suites overlooking Central Park, or are simply too afraid to make costly purchases that vacations often involve (how about that $99,000 space-travel package, billed as the “ultimate ride”?). According to Forrester Research Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., less than 30% of households online actually made any travel bookings this year. Travel Web sites “just aren’t user-friendly,” says Henry Harteveldt, an analyst there.

Even Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelocity.com (www.travelocity.com), one of the nation’s biggest travel Web sites, says he called a travel agent before he went on a vacation to Morocco. And he’d do it again. “We can’t sell you everything,” he says. “The Internet isn’t for exotic destinations and complex trips.”

My trip wasn’t exactly exotic. Nor was it very complex: With my husband and eight-month-old son, I planned to fly from Portland, Ore., to Los Angeles for a big-city weekend with my brother-in-law, then drive to Palm Springs for some rest and relaxation. Never did I dream that just booking my flight would take a week — longer than my whole trip.

From the start, I discovered that Web sites that offer air fares seem to specialize in asking the same questions, over and over again: flight times, flight dates, departure cities, arrival cities. Three times I tried the well-known online bidding site, Priceline.com (Priceline.com), and three times it rejected me within three minutes, shooting back e-mails saying “sorry” to my progressively higher bids. (“Sorry, we couldn’t get you a ticket,” says a Priceline.com spokesman.) Combine that with the distractions so many of these new jazzy sites now have (click on a picture of Hawaii and you end up reading about the habits of manta rays), and four days later, you’ll still be at the computer with no tickets.

Ultimately, I would try a handful of sites that specialize in last-minute “bargains” — as well as those “e-saver” fares airlines release just before the travel dates. But I wasn’t flexible enough on my departure times. Defeated, I logged onto the Alaska Airlines site and paid $475 each, not exactly the rock-bottom bargain of my dreams.

At least my flight existed. Chris and Whitney Chandor, of Pineville, Pa., weren’t so lucky. They booked first-class tickets for $900 each for a long weekend in the Bahamas last March on Travelocity.com. When the Chandors arrived at the airport, they were told US Airways had canceled their flight a month earlier without bothering to tell them. “If they had called us, we would have been able to help,” says a Travelocity.com spokesman. A US Airways spokesman wouldn’t comment on an individual case, but says it is the airline’s responsibility to notify travelers about changes. Instead of fishing in the Bahamas with friends, the Chandors spent hours arguing with desk agents and airline managers — to say nothing about that cold weekend at a second-rate B&B in Maryland.

“My vacation was ruined,” says Mr. Chandor, who vows never to book an electronic ticket again, though US Airways eventually did give the couple new, free tickets. He’ll go with the “human element” next time, he says, via the old-fashioned telephone.

For my “phoneless” vacation, the surfing was surprisingly smoother on the hotel front. I had no problems, for example, arranging my appointment for a facial on one hotel Web site — which I could do even before reserving a room there. It also took me just minutes to snare a room online at Los Angeles’ swank Hotel Bel-Air. There, via e-mail, a friendly concierge found me a baby sitter and promised to have a crib waiting in our room. “We will take care of it,” he wrote.

Promises, promises. When we arrived at the Bel-Air at 1 a.m. — late flight, hour-long wait in the Avis line at LAX (making the idea of “virtual” travel more appealing) — there was no crib in the room, so I had to call the front desk. (Because I came in so late, the hotel must have thought I was a no-show, a spokeswoman says.) Reservations for all kinds of travel arrangements made on the Web sometimes don’t materialize, either because of simple human error — or worse, says Phillip McKee, assistant director of Internet Fraud for the National Consumer’s League. “Just because you make a reservation online doesn’t mean you should rely on it being there,” he says. “Calling to make sure will save a lot of heartache.”

And maybe it wasn’t because I booked my room on the Internet, but I was given the smallest room in the whole hotel. (I know this for certain, because it just so happens I wrote a story last year about the smallest rooms in hotels, and the one I was assigned this time is the same one I measured for that story.) We complained, and got a bigger room — at 3 a.m.

The next morning, while my husband was lounging by the pool, I was hooking up my laptop inside the hotel room, anxious to see if the request I made through the “Culture Finder Ticket Butler” on Digitalcity.com (Digitalcity.com) had been filled. Crisis: The show (a concert with Audra McDonald) was cancelled. I asked about alternatives, but my requests went unanswered. (“You should have gotten a response,” says a spokesman for CultureFinder.com (CultureFinder.com), which is responsible for finding the tickets.) Growing slightly panicked, I sent a note to my new friend, the concierge, seeking suggestions. Other guests enjoyed a relaxing afternoon in the sun. I spent much of the day in the room, checking e-mail.

Finally, I booked a dinner reservation on a site called RestaurantRow.com (RestaurantRow.com) (“If you can’t cook, click!”) and then called my brother-in-law to see if he had heard of it. He hadn’t. And what were we doing tonight, anyway, he wanted to know? In the end, none of my entertainment requests came through. (At the last minute, the concierge found us theater tickets for “The Vagina Monologues” — at $175 each — but for some reason, I couldn’t sell the guys on it.) The baby sitter showed up, as promised, and we went to the restaurant I had booked online. While the food was delicious, it turned out to be in a fairly dicey neighborhood — something the Internet never told me. OK, I decided, it might not be such a bad idea to reach for the phone once in a while.

Clearly, these are just a few of the bugs that e-travel needs to work out. Never mind the widespread fear of credit-card fraud all online users face, or the junk e-mails that always seem to bombard your inbox days after you visit a site. Some sites have hidden biases, allowing travel companies that advertise with them to dominate flight listings. (That might explain my trouble finding a cheap fare.) Another caution: Don’t be too impatient and click on the purchase button more than once — you could get charged several times. Then there was the time Robin Crook was elated at the great price she found for a hotel room in Vancouver, Wash. The problem? She really wanted to travel to Vancouver, British Columbia.

Because of various glitches, as many as 80% of the 1,000 or so existing travel-related Web sites may not be around in three years, according to a Bear, Stearns study. Robert A. LaFleur, co-author of the report, argues that Web travel is still in its infancy despite its rapid growth. For now, the report says, it’s “all lookie, no bookie.”

Still, the Internet can be a wonderful research tool for trips — just be sure to bring a printer along, or you’ll be copying out a lot of directions by hand. (And don’t tell anyone what you’re doing, or you’ll end up becoming an online travel agent for all your friends and family.) During the trip, I also relied on a lot of virtual advice — free guides, discussion groups and chat rooms, and hundreds of tour company brochures.

Rick Hyde, a sales engineer in Mountain View, Calif., had scheduled a diving trip to Fiji last June, but was worried about a U.S. State Department warning about civil unrest on the Pacific island. So he signed on to a “coup discussion group” where he was able to monitor an in-depth debate on Fijian politics, and what he read convinced him he’d be safe. When his concerns shifted to dive conditions, water temperature and coral sites, there were discussion groups for those, too.

But in Palm Springs, I found that glowing reviews on many tourism sites may well be the biggest virtual trap out there. Aside from independent Internet discussion groups, I came across only one negative comment on a travel Web site (it warned that the “Palm Springs Follies,” a musical by local senior citizens, was “recommended for viewers over 65″). All it took was one visit to the hotel’s concierge to deter me from several spots I’d read about online: Desert Hot Springs, a town described by one site as a “Mecca for vacationers,” was locally referred to as “Desperate Hot Springs,” she told me. (“That’s an old joke,” says Jo Lynn Slaughter, executive director of the Desert Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not true. Those people just need to be educated.”)

Another town, about two hours away, sounded charming on a Web site, but in the concierge’s opinion was a “total waste of time.” In about five minutes, she gave me a map, pointed out some local attractions, and sent me on my way, making a mockery out of the hours of computer research I’d done that morning. Of course, trusting a concierge is relinquishing control of your destiny, which matters more to members of the digital generation, who have grown up with the Internet, says Clare Lagiewski, who directs the travel and tourism program at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt. “They don’t believe a travel agent or tourism official will try as hard to find what’s right for them as they would themselves,” she says.

And maybe she’s right. As I drove back to LAX in the car I rented over the Internet, to take the flight home that I booked over the Internet, I did feel slightly empowered. But for some things, it still helps to get advice from a real human being. For instance, I was glad I brought along a coat, because the nights in Palm Springs were pretty cold. No Internet site mentioned that. My dad told me.

Hotwire (www.hotwire.com), which is backed by six of the largest U.S. airlines and private investment concern Texas Pacific Group, is expected to announce that it has begun offering international air tickets from 19 overseas carriers, along with the eight U.S. airlines that already peddle domestic tickets on the site. The site last month added 1,500 U.S. hotels for room reservations in 25 major cities, and Wednesday is expected to announce that rental-car suppliers Hertz Corp. and Budget Group Inc.’s Budget Rent a Car Corp., have joined its supplier roster with cars at 200 locations at major airports in the U.S.

In its first 100 days of sales, San Francisco-based Hotwire sold 100,000 tickets, said its chief executive, Karl Peterson. The service now has one million registered users, and its transaction volumes are “ahead of plan,” he added.

Hotwire’s current numbers are a drop in the bucket compared with those of Priceline, the leading though unprofitable purveyor of the travel industry’s so-called distressed inventory. Priceline, which launched its service in 1998, sold 1.29 million airline tickets and 1.1 million hotel-room nights and rental-car days in the fiscal third quarter.

Hotwire thinks it has built a more user-friendly travel discount mall. Priceline uses a “name your own price” formula. Customers must bid for the travel products, and Priceline either accepts or rejects those bids. If a bid is accepted, the customer can’t change his mind and his credit card is immediately billed.

By contrast, on Hotwire, customers explain what they want and receive a price quotation, and then have 30 minutes to accept the offer or withdraw. Neither Hotwire nor Priceline reveals which airline, time of day of travel or flight routing until the customer has paid, and neither awards frequent-flier miles. Both are aimed at price-conscious leisure travelers.

Hotwire’s new foreign airline partners, which include Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Brazil’s Varig, among other leading airlines, bring its total airline stable to 27. Priceline has 34 airline partners, 6,000 participating hotels and a customer base of eight million. It also sells new cars, long-distance phone services and home mortgages through its site.

Customers who place an order for a cellphone in advance of their trip will find it waiting for them upon arrival. Arrangements can also be made to deliver it to a home or business before departure for an additional charge.

The phone rental is available in 100 countries, and allows users to move between different international locations without having to set up roaming facilities. The phones are equipped with automatic network selection, so users can make and receive calls anywhere there is cellphone service. Equipment rental costs $4.80 for a day, $28.80 a week or $96 for a month.

The Web site has a list of current calling rate charges in countries ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe. Rates for peak-hour calls to the U.S. range from 64 cents a minute in the U.K. to $11.55 a minute to phone home from Yugoslavia.

Incoming calls are free, but voice-mail retrieval is charged at U.K. rates, (approximately 40 cents a minute). Those accessing voice mail from other countries are charged the cost to call back to the U.K.

The phones are equipped with text messaging, voice mail and other accoutrements; additional features such as a car charger, headset kit or modem hookup are available for an additional daily rate. Customers are given a pre-paid postage box to mail the phone back at the end of the trip.