By Darren Cronian on Saturday, November 24th, 2007

Obviously I love travel and I spend a lot of time online. Over the coming month I will be publishing my travel lists for 2007, but I want to be a little unique, so add me to your favourite social bookmarking site or subscribe to my RSS feed.

Travel Rants - Best Travel Web sites 2007

Here is my first list – 2007 travel favourites:

Travel community

Runner Up: TravBuddy
Winner: Travellerspoint

There are thousands of travel community sites providing travellers with a platform to ask questions and write about their own travel experiences. I chose Travellerspoint because of the obvious passion for travel and the very useful wikitravel guide and travel maps.

Travel in the Media

Runner Up: Guardian
Winner: The Times

I visit both of these sites daily, without fail, but the Times won it for me because of their excellent layout, and easy to use travel search. I could spend hours on this site; listening to the podcasts, reading the latest travel news and information on green travel.

Travel Inspiration

Runner Up: Wikitravel
Winner: Lonely Planet

Whenever I am looking for inspiration on my next travel destinations I take a visit to Lonely Planet. I spend way too much time on this site reading travel guides and articles. You can now download sections of the famous lonely planet travel guides and print them out for your travels.

Holiday/Hotel Reviews

Runner Up: Holiday Watchdog
Winner: Trip Advisor

Whenever I speak to someone about planning their travels I mention Trip Advisor. I feel confident that the reviews I am reading are from real travellers and are not fabricated from hotel owners. To be honest I use both of these sites when searching for hotels or apartments to get the ‘bigger picture’

Travel Search

Runner Up: Sidestep
Winner: Travel Supermarket

Whilst I’d like to see more travel operators / agencies adding their holidays to Travel Supermarket I love this site for it’s ease of use, and that I can search for the best deals on package holidays, hotels or flights. Like Trip advisor it has a useful travel community where you can ask travel related questions.

Travel Best on the Web

Runner Up: Sky Scanner
Winner: Trip Advisor

Trip Advisor is my travel bible, whenever I fancy going on holiday I visit this site for inspiration, to read reviews of hotels and then visit the forum to ask any question I may have about the destination or hotel and in return I receive responses from travellers who have first hand experience.

Please feel free to discuss on the comments section and let me know what you think of this list.


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17 responses to “Travel Rants – Best Travel Web sites 2007”

Jens Thraenhart | 25 November, 2007 at 5:25 am

Very nice list Darren!
All the best, Jens

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Charlie Anzman | 25 November, 2007 at 4:56 pm

Darren – From one who has been living Travel and related SEO and PPC … Posts like this one scare me. Sometimes you come up with great stuff but we all know TripAdvisor is top-loaded by the hotel owners, and despite recent improvements, will probably always be. Try searching a niche market. You can literally see them battling it out. Not to mention, of course, that one is MUCH more likely to post a bad experience than a good one?

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Sam I Am | 26 November, 2007 at 11:15 am

Hey cool, we won best community! Thanks Darren; that rocks! Charlie, I know where you’re coming from but tripadvisor is still insanely good at the review thing for popular destinations. I’ve been known to check it on occassion if I want to be sure a place I’m spending a lot of money on for a longer stay will not be absolutely terrible. I take the ones that seem too positive and too negative with a grain of salt and stick with the more well formulated ones and it usually ends up pretty accurate.

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Pierre van Eck | 26 November, 2007 at 12:56 pm

An interesting list but I miss my favourite community in the lineup… The comment from Sam I Am is very true ito some reviews being at extremes, but in general I’ve found the information at trivago to be quite reliable. Add to this the multilingual platforms and real time price comparisons and you’ll understand why I consider them to be better than many of the other options.

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Darren Cronian | 26 November, 2007 at 1:53 pm

Jens, thanks :)

Charlie, I disagree. Whilst I am sure their system is not 100% foolproof, it’s always being reliable when I have booked hotels.

I read a bad review of a hotel in London, I should of gone with their review, but it was the only hotel left and needed a place to stay.

The review was spot on, it was a dive.

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Darren Cronian | 26 November, 2007 at 2:01 pm

Hear Hear Sam. I agree. I also think its a good idea to compare different review sites. For example I always check Holiday Watchdog and Trip Advisor.

Pierre, you wouldn’t work for Trivago.com would you? ;)

It’s the first time I have come across this site and it looks good, but will test the reviews out when I travel next.

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Pierre van Eck | 26 November, 2007 at 4:54 pm

Hi Darren – thanks for your comment and willingness to test out trivago. To answer your question: no, I am not a member of the trivago staff. I do however contribute as a member of the international community and, after more than a year, have had plenty of opportunities to compare them with similar sites… favourably ;-)

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Darren Cronian | 28 November, 2007 at 1:31 pm

Pierre, the reason why I asked the question is that you seem to spend a alot of time promoting trivago on the internet.

I am sure more communities would love to have people like you being members.

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Sam I Am | 28 November, 2007 at 2:04 pm

Haha Darren, too true. If I’m not mistaken I’ve deleted ‘pierre’s’ stuff from TP before. You don’t have to have a lot of google skills to figure out that he’s at least being compensated in some way for promoting trivago. Tons of guestbook and forum spam. He’s either the inhouse ’seo’ or he might even be a guise name for one of the founders….hmmm, now there’s an idea for me! :)

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Darren Cronian | 28 November, 2007 at 3:32 pm

Tut Tut.

Pierre, if your working for Trivago, it’s less embarrassing to admit it beforehand. Trust is important for travellers and consumers.

I’d hate to think that any travel company was fabricating comments and reviews.

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Pierre van Eck | 28 November, 2007 at 5:53 pm

“I’d hate to think that any travel company was fabricating comments and reviews.” So would I …
@ Sam I Am: If you are seemingly so conscious of my web presence, you may have noticed that I am in Cape Town – quite a distance from trivago which is based in Germany, no? I reiterate: I am a member of the community – nothing more, nor less.

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Spenny - Benz Travel | 28 November, 2007 at 7:38 pm

clearly this website is not a public forum – some of my posts have been edited…

freedom of speech is what i beleive in …whatever you want to say

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Spenny - Benz Travel | 28 November, 2007 at 7:39 pm

and i bet you wont post that will you admin

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Darren Cronian | 28 November, 2007 at 8:38 pm

Spenny, none of your posts have been edited.

You posted a comment which was promoting your companies website and not participating in discussion.

Maybe you would like to email me the actual comment which was edited?

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Charlie Anzman | 5 February, 2008 at 9:05 pm

Darren – Your most-recent post about further consolidation in the hotel advice web space troubles me even more. At least, that way people have a comparison of websites to use. As far as my earlier comments, take a look at the parent company of TripAdvisor and who else they own. I’m glad you had a good experience. I think the concept is good. They still need as lot of work on safeguards and are becoming much more widely used every day.

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Zenon | 10 March, 2008 at 2:18 pm

I was looking for travelling in china TripAdvisor is Too pumped up with adds and the search engine seems to pick it up automatically even if there is no relevant content are there any good China specific websites so far my best info has been from travel blogs which tend to often be a little outdated

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Zenon | 10 March, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Just to clarify I will be travelling to quite remote places for work purposes that probably wouldn’t qualify as profitable enough warrant a display on any promotional sites such as Trip advisor thus my luck up till now being limited to a few travellers own blogs however as Ive mentioned these are quite outdated. And although I can speak Mandarin I cannot read it so even the chinese sites dont help much.

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