ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994                   TAG: 9407220004
SECTION: TRAVEL                    PAGE: F6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BARBARA SHEA Newsday
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PHONE CARDS ARE HANDY FOR THOSE TRAVELING ABROAD

What's the best freebie you've ever gotten for booking a tour: A couple of plastic luggage tags? A thimble-sized sewing kit? A dorky accordion-pleated rain bonnet?

Most travelers have drawers full of these tokens, which never seem to be as useful as intended.

But a new perk has started showing up this year that's almost guaranteed to come in handy abroad. It's a prepaid telephone calling card.

Phone cards represent a relatively small expense for large companies, but they can be invaluable to vacationers, eliminating the need for coming up with the right combination of foreign coins or special tokens to make local calls while abroad and for communicating with operators when they want to phone home.

At least two major travel-services companies are offering prepaid phone cards to their customers, and more are likely to follow suit in coming months.

Currently, vacationers booking Rail Europe's EuroPlus tours, which are geared to independent travelers, receive a Sprint Europhone card good for a three-minute international call from Europe or 10 minutes of local calling in more than 30 countries - a value of about $6.

The Kemwel Group is offering $10 worth of free MCI overseas phone service to travelers who book rental cars in about 30 countries (mainly European) this year. If you opt for a new Peugeot through a lease-type arrangement of two weeks or more, you'll get a card good for $25 worth of calls.

Sprint's distributor, TeleTouch Inc., is negotiating with European airlines, hotels and other tour operators about distributing the card as a perk for their customers, too, according to a spokesman. Eventually, you'll be able to buy one to give to a student headed for a semester abroad or to carry along on your own vacation trip, he said. Cards will be available in five denominations - 10, 20, 40, 50 and 100 units, with each unit equal to one minute of local calling time. A three-minute international call requires about 10 units from western Europe.

For EuroPlus information, call (800) 462-2577. For information on Kemwel, call (800) 678-0678. 


 by CNB