All posts in Travel planning

I loved how the internet has created great social community sites for travellers, but I am afraid I am becoming bored of it all now. Daily, I receive emails asking me for my comments sites with the same features, i.e. create your own blog, plot your journey on a Google Map, leave hotel and trip reviews etc.

Snore Snore – come on people let’s get a little more creative.

Jorge Soto, of myTripz.com contacted me recently, and my first impressions of the site was that it was bland, and boring [and I told him so] but after signing up, I’m actually having a fun time. The site is not just about leaving reviews, but it has an element of networking, where you can add friends, and network with other members.

What I like is that the reviews aren’t just of hotels, but members have left reviews of restaurants, bars and hostels, but like most social sites, you can create a journal, upload travel photographs.

You can create groups, but I am not sure what happens when you create a group as there doesn’t appear to be a way where you can communicate with members publically, which is what I think is lacking from the site. I’d like to see an element of Orkut included in this site where members can discuss topics via forum style boards.

Kayak, the travel search engine, has not yet launched it’s hotel and car hire search, and a launch date has yet to be announced. It’s a shame, but I imagine it will give its competitors, i.e. Travel Supermarket and SideStep etc. a lead in the UK and European travel market.

So what’s a ‘Travel search engine’ in simple terms? It’s a website where you can search for flights, hotels and car hire from a number of travel companies, from within one website. Travel Supermarket for example allows you to compare package holidays, hotels, flights etc. from thousands of travel companies, rather than searching for hours on the internet.

Thanks to Kevin May, at Travolution for the ‘heads up’ on the Kayak story.

A week or two back, I wrote a travel article to help you find the perfect holiday destination, so today, I want to write and help you research your chosen holiday destination. Personally, I think it’s important that you educate yourself on a few of the local laws and customs, and learn the very basics of the local language.

Find out the location of the nearest chemists hospital and doctors – I know it sounds drastic, and a little over the top, but if your in a strange, new country, it’ll help being prepared before you go.

Visit travel forums and ask questions – forums are very useful places to go and ask for help from people who have already visited the holiday destination. Find out which areas of the country, city or town you should avoid – the last thing you want to happen is to find yourself in the worst neighbourhood you could imagine.

Your first port of call should be the Foreign, Commonwealth Office (FCO) website and search for the latest information on your destination. It’ll give you crime information, road safety, entry requirements, and contact details for the local British embassy, which is worth writing down.

Continue reading →

Hi, my name is Alastair James and I am the technical director of the new travel mapping and recommendation site MapSack. Coming from a technical background, it is probably safe to describe myself as a geek.

It is often said that online travel sites lag behind other state-of-the-art web sites in terms of the latest technology trends, online travel is clearly progressing with new and exciting innovation. As I am a geek, I am incapable of telling the ‘useful’ from the ‘just plain cool’, so I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss Web 2.0 in online travel with real travelers.

I am sure many people will have heard the term ‘travel 2.0′. But are you sure exactly what it means? I most certainly am not. One possible answer is that it is the second generation of travel information sites, following the trend of the ‘web 2.0′ elsewhere on the Internet.

Continue reading →