跟踪导练(四)6
2016-03-01
阅读理解
If you dont think technology can improve your trip, meet Judy Williams. When she and her husband recently checked into Blu Hotel in Zurich, a clerk asked them to sign the dotted line on a room rate hundreds of dollars higher than their online offer.
“It was not a cheap stay,” says Williams, a lawyer from Billings, Mont. But it became more of one after her husband fired up the Booking.com app hed used to book their room on his smartphone. “As soon as we showed him the cost, he honored it,” Williams says.
Technology may create challenges for travelers but it can also solve them. Its more than making sure of a hotel cost. The latest Booking.com can help users select hotels by location, make a secure booking and view the confirmed (已确认的) cost so they never need to re-discuss their hotel price.
Another pain point for travelers is traffic that eats away precious vacation time. Theres a new app called Commute which is aimed at users who have to make the same trip every day. But if youre headed to Los Angeles or Honolulu, where visitors can easily get stuck in hours of heavy traffic, Commute can help.
Just input basic information about your destination and expected leaving time, and the app will start sending you traffic information 15 minutes before you leave. Testing Commute proved to be a challenge for me, because my home address is about 900 miles from my place of work. But if you have only a short distance to travel through a heavily populated area, you can use Commute to avoid traffic jams.
Another source of travel-related problems is money. Thats particularly true when youre dealing with a foreign currency. The latest Travel Money Tracker helps travelers prevent currency mix-ups. It immediately changes a countrys native currency to yours, so you know exactly how much that coffee in Milan costs in dollars. It can also warn you when youre overspending, which can sometimes be a problem when youre on vacation. The only catch, of course, is that you have to remember to record all your purchases.
Taken together, these apps solve some of the most common travel problems. But not all of them. Some things, no smartphone can fix, which means I get to keep my job for now.
1. What can we learn from Judy Williamss experience?
A. Technology can make our trips better.
B. The clerk was very friendly and patient.
C. Smartphones have many effects on our lives.
D. The cost of Blu Hotel was higher than that of others.