Essential sites to Research your Holiday
By Darren Cronian on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

Many of us prefer booking a package holiday because we feel more secure, but even if you intend to visit travel agency to book your holiday, I think it’s still wise to come away and research the resort and accommodation before you book.

Essential sites to Research your Holiday

Whilst the travel agent will be very knowledgeable about the resort and accommodation, it’s very unlikely that they will have a personal experience, so use the internet to find other holidaymakers who have stayed at the resort.

Essential travel research websites

Yahoo Travel

Yahoo has really improved their travel channel, with a lot of reviews from holidaymakers, useful travel guides, and its trip planner is great at helping you plan your holiday. Search for your resort or accommodation and read what other holidaymakers have written about it.

Holiday Watchdog

Search for your holiday resort and read reviews left by holidaymakers – each resort has a rating, which is calculated depending on the score left by holidaymakers. You can also watch travel videos of some of the resorts, which are provided by holidaymakers and Thomson.

Review Centre

I only recently found out about this site, but it has tons of reviews of holiday companies, resorts, and accommodation and travel services. It’s not the most attractive of sites, but it’s a good site to check holidaymaker’s comments and build up a picture of what people think about the destination etc.

Trip Advisor

I couldn’t write a guide without mentioning Trip Advisor. Whenever I am looking for hotels, I use this site to read reviews, look at pictures taken by holidaymakers. With review sites you have to be open minded, and compare the hotel or resort on a few review sites.

Holiday Truths

Not the most attractive of forums but it is stuffed with content written by holidaymakers. Choose your holiday destination and then read through the posts created by holidaymakers. You can also search the forum for resort, accommodation or company names posts which will help you plan your holiday.

When reading reviews it’s worth having an open mind – um how can I put this diplomatically. Well there’s some people who will leave a complaint about something trivial, for example, one hotel I found, an American holidaymaker had complained that the pillows weren’t thick enough.

Researching might sound time consuming, but it could save you from booking that nightmare holiday.


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11 responses to “Essential sites to Research your Holiday”

Lee Harrison (owner Select World Travel) | 25 April, 2007 at 8:40 am

Insiders Tip Darren
http://www.worldtravelguide.net is essential for Country info, Visas, Health, etc etc
It’s one of our Bibles and i’m sure you’ll enjoy looking at the site

Also Gazetteers site, except the information costs a subscription of £649 + vat is essential to Travel Agents features every resort as well as impartial advice on Hotels, apartments etc . You could say it’s the Travel agents version of tripadvisor .
You can however go on the site and read reviews by Travel Agents who have visited Hotels by going here. http://www.gazetteers.com/TopTips.asp

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Karen Bryan | 25 April, 2007 at 11:20 am

I think that it’s always a good idea to do some research into your destination and accommodation but as you say, Darren, read up from several different sources.

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Richie | 25 April, 2007 at 4:59 pm

I’ve added these sites to my favourites, thanks.

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Darren Cronian | 25 April, 2007 at 7:16 pm

No problem.

By the way Richie, have you heard of a site called Del icio us?

http://www.del.icio.us where you can store your fav sites and web pages, so when your on the move you can find the sites easily.

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Darren Cronian | 25 April, 2007 at 7:18 pm

Lee, I like the gazetteers.com site, it’s a shame though that other travel agents can’t add comments on the individual posts though to make it more interactive..

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Elihu | 25 April, 2007 at 10:48 pm

Homeandabroad.com is another great trip planning site to check out that is similar in a lot of ways to yahoo travel. I’ve used it quite a bit, though it’s fairly new. We loved the traveling activities for kids and the expert recommendations we used on our recent trip to Hawaii.

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Rohan | 26 April, 2007 at 12:42 am

Hawaii, now theres somewhere I’d love to visit.

Darren, that del.icio site, is there an easier to way to add websites to your account?

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Darren Cronian | 26 April, 2007 at 12:46 am

Rohan,

You can download an add-on for your browser, which allows you to tag a site when your visiting it.

I think you can download it from the settings link at the top right of the page.

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Rohan | 27 April, 2007 at 11:37 am

Thanks Darren – sorted.

That forum is very useful but aweful to find your way around.

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Darren Cronian | 27 April, 2007 at 11:38 am

No problem Rohan.

I use the del.icio.us rather than my Favourites in the browser. It’s useful when your in a webcafe abroad.

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Sarah Bennett | 27 April, 2007 at 9:48 pm

Trip Advisor is a life saver.

I was stranded in Cape Town, after my hotel had being double booked, and no rooms were vacant. I went to an internet cafe, and used Trip Advisor to find a suitable replacement.

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