Visitors to Oahu, Hawaii, who want to climb Diamond Head’s 279 stairs and crawl through its pre-World War I fortifications will have to pay $5 per car starting in September. The fee increases to $40 for commercial buses carrying more than 25 passengers, and walk-ins will pay $1.
A $1-per-head fee on all visitors has been in place for about two years, but the system relied on hikers stopping at a kiosk to pay before they ambled up the crater. The new system will collect fees from people coming by car, bus or on foot at a single tollbooth as they enter the park, said Daniel Quinn, state parks administrator. The fees will help pay for maintenance and interpretive services at more than 50 parks and monuments around the state, Quinn said. Diamond Head will be the only Hawaii state park with an entrance fee, he said.
More than a half-million visitors a year tackle the hike of roughly a mile to the top of Diamond Head, which was used for decades by the United States military as a lookout.
For more details, call 808-587-0300.
Thrifty London trains
Thirsty for more North American tourists this summer, London is offering rail bargains, including a special round-trip rate on its speedy airport express trains. Americans visiting London for five days or less can save a heap of British pounds by purchasing special round-trip rail fares between the airport and downtown London, available from Rail Europe.
The special fare is $20 from Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted Airports, but both segments of the round-trip must be completed within five days. Normally, the 15-minute Heathrow express train to downtown Paddington station costs $34 round-trip in standard class.
Train travel in Britain or on the Continent can be booked in advance by calling Rail Europe at 888-382-7245, or at www.raileurope.com.
MapQuest the hot site
Where do travel planners go most often for help, or for booking on the Internet?
MapQuest easily topped a list of travel-related sites that drew the most unique visitors; it drew 2.9 million in a week, not counting repeat visits, according to a recent Nielsen/NetRatings survey. The mapping site is used for locating destinations, finding directions and distances, and plotting routes.
No. 2 in the survey for the week ended April 21 was Expedia (1.87 million), followed by Yahoo Maps (1.74 million), Travelocity (1.3 million) and Orbitz.com (1.04 million).
Rounding out the list were AOL Travel (875,000), hotwire.com (845,000), Southwest Airlines (796,000), cheaptickets.com (704,000) and Priceline (635,000).
The survey also sorted travel users by gender and age: 55.6 percent were female, 44.4 percent male, and the age group using the sites most was 35 to 49, with 34.9 percent of the total. The next-largest group was ages 25 to 34, which accounted for 21.7 percent.
