Search engines help fans follow the stars
Two new specialty travel websites are taking the hassle out of going on the road with your favorite sports team or rock 'n' roll band.
SportsGroupie.com and TuneTrips.com link the power of a travel search engine with sports and tour schedules, making it much easier to catch the Red Sox in Baltimore or follow U2 around the country.
''There's nothing out there that does this," said Ron Lohse, 39, a computer programmer and Sox fan from Randolph, who came up with the idea for the websites after a trip to spring training in Fort Myers, Fla., last year.
In arranging that trip, Lohse had to visit several websites to check the Red Sox schedule, buy game tickets, and find a flight, hotel, and rental car. He said it was a lot to juggle.
SportsGroupie puts it all together on one website. It has the schedules for every professional baseball, football, soccer, hockey, and basketball team, and most NASCAR events. Lohse said he is working on adding some college athletic schedules, particularly for tournaments.
Users simply click on the game or event they want to see and tabs appear for searches for flights, hotels, cars, and game tickets. The user still has to conduct a search for each element of the trip, but SportsGroupie makes the search easier because it automatically inputs your travel parameters.
TuneTrips does the same thing, but it is customized for concert events. You click on Bon Jovi or Coldplay and up comes their concert schedule. You select where and when you want to see them and TuneTrips searches for the best way to get there.
For tickets, SportsGroupie offers the user the option of purchasing them from TicketsNow.com, an Illinois-based ticket reseller. TuneTrips does not link the user to a ticket purchasing site.
Because not all sports or concert venues sell out, it probably would make sense to check the team's or concert venue's website separately to see if tickets are available for the event you want to see. Lohse said he decided to link SportsGroupie to TicketsNow because he knew the website would have tickets for most events.
''With the secondary ticket market, there's always tickets available," he said. ''They're just outrageously expensive."
Both of Lohse's websites rely on the travel search engine Kayak.com, for which he has done some programming work. Kayak doesn't sell anything, but instead searches a wide variety of travel websites to find all the options that meet a customer's needs. Once the customer selects an option, he or she clicks through to the actual travel supplier and books the trip, avoiding the fees charged by most online travel agencies.
Lohse's two websites operate similarly. Through Kayak, the websites connect users directly to the travel supplier for booking. They don't sell a user anything, but make their money from advertising and referral fees. Lohse operates the websites in his spare time and doesn't have the money to advertise heavily, so he hopes to build traffic through word-of-mouth.
Lohse is convinced that many sports and concert fans travel to see their favorite teams and acts. He went to see the Red Sox play in Baltimore in September. He said it seemed as if half the stadium was filled with Sox fans, and they were plentiful at the airport and at his hotel, too, he said.
His goal now is to make people aware of his website.
''The motivation isn't to make a lot of money," Lohse said. ''The motivation is to fill a need and see where it goes from there."
Contact Bruce Mohl at mohl@globe.com. 
