Executive Travel : Pocket-Size Help in Getting to and From the Airport

For many business travelers, the airplane ride is the smoothest part of the trip. That’s why entrepreneurs Ron Salk and Howard Davis put out a pocket-size reference called “Salk International’s Airport Transit Guide.”

The guide contains information on ground transportation options that will get a traveler from an airport to the closest downtown area and vice versa. The 1995 guide contains references on 421 airports worldwide, and it’s in the process of being reprinted to include the just-opened Denver International Airport.

For some travelers, it has become as indispensable a tool for strategic planning on the road as the Official Airlines Guide, considered one of the bibles of airline flight schedules. To date, Salk and business partners Davis and Seth Adams have sold more than 1 million copies of the books.

The purpose of the guide is to help people on the road figure out the best way to get between the airport and downtown, said Salk, who along with his partners has published the guide since 1989.

The guide was started by a Chicago-based executive and inveterate traveler, who called Salk one day and asked him if he wanted to buy the book he’d been publishing out of his garage.

“I told him I had already placed an order,” Salk said. “And he said, ‘No, I mean do you want to buy the whole thing?’ ”

The whole thing includes information on taxi rates, tipping guidelines, colors of cabs to avoid; airport coach, limo or van fares and schedules, along with wheelchair accessibility; public transit fares, schedules and routes, including information on baggage space availability; inter-airport and port connections for people going on cruises; airport parking rates; car rental facilities, and even helicopter services where available.

“The most common mistake people make is overpaying for ground transportation,” Davis said. People either always rent a car or take a taxi out of habit, even when there are excellent rail lines, shuttles or bus services available. Or they won’t realize that it can be cheaper in some instances to rent a sedan and a driver than to rent a car yourself.

Salk’s company, Salk International Travel Premiums Inc. in Huntington Beach, relies on a network of correspondents, ranging from ground transportation managers at airports to individual travelers, who send in information from wherever they happen to be on a trip.

And Salk, who also operates a tour business, checks out ground transportation whenever he goes on the road.

The guide has proven popular with individual travelers and travel agents, who often buy it in bulk to give to their customers. (Individual travelers can purchase the guide through Magellan’s travel catalogue by calling [800] 962-4943. It sells for $7.95 including postage, according to Salk.)

“I like the information in it,” said Alex Sproul, owner of Travel in the Main, an Evanston, Ill.-based travel agency. “I’ve never found an error in the facts it contains, and it covers a lot of cities.”

Sproul likes it enough, in fact, that he has asked for an on-line version so that he can make individual city printouts to include in ticket jackets for his customers. Salk is working on such a project.

Letty Fong of San Francisco-based Getz International, a corporate travel agency, includes a guide with every start-up kit she sends to new clients.

Ground transportation has changed a lot in recent years, so it’s good to have updated information, Fong said. Business travelers, especially, like to know what their options are.

“You might be thinking of taking a taxi but notice it’s so expensive it makes more sense to just rent a car,” she said.

“Airports are trying to have more and more services provided, whether they are cabs, hotel shuttles or limousine services,” said Victoria Pannell, spokeswoman for the Airports Council International of North America, a Washington-based trade organization representing airport facilities. “And where possible, they are trying to link into train and bus lines as well.”

The result, while increasing travelers’ choices, can also be confusing, said Erik Griswold, a sales representative for Clipper Navigation in Seattle. Griswold, who has used the guide for five years, routinely sends information back to Salk’s headquarters as a volunteer correspondent.

“I know before I arrive what I’m going to do instead of spending a long time figuring it out once I’ve gotten there,” he said.

The most cost- and time-effective solution to ground travel varies from city to city, Griswold said. Some airports are located right next to downtown areas, where you might not need to rent a car.

But Denver International, for example, is 28 miles outside of Denver, 18 miles farther away than the old airport was.

As a result, the ground transportation options have multiplied, said Diane Wenger, manager of ground transportation services. “There were 230 companies serving the old airport, and we have 270 companies here now.”

That’s enough to make even the pros look for a little help.

“I buy [the book] for myself,” said Wenger of the Air Transit Guide. “And I give it to other people.”