Kate Rice
Kate Rice—a freelance editor, writer, and online travel analyst—maintains a website at katerice.net. She has covered topics in travel for the past two decades, and her work—which often concerns consumer and business travel, hotels, airlines, family travel, and adventure travel—has appeared in both trade and consumer publications. Ms. Rice is especially knowledgeable about travel technology, and has reported on the increasing prevalence of the internet, and its impact on travel retailing for over ten years.
Though travel agents are becoming less necessary with the increased usage of the internet by travelers, some travel companies—seeing the value of one-on-one human interaction—haven’t completely done away with the human aspect of travel planning. Orbitz, in particular, features a service that allows its users to help one another plan their trips by sharing tips on various travel-related topics. Ms. Rice sees this move as a positive step. She has been quoted as saying that this service may help Orbitz attract potential customers to its site. Orbitz is one of the first travel sites to offer such a service, and it will likely benefit from its innovation.