According to Hitwise, an internet research company, there are now more than
12,000 travel websites aimed at UK consumers. New ones appear almost daily.
Some people will greet this news with whoops of delight. Others will feel
the urge to lie down in a cool, dark room. If you’re among the latter, this
is for you: a list of just 10 essential travel sites.
Our selection is not based on popularity. A list of the most-visited travel
sites in the UK (see box, right) does include a couple of gems, but it’s low
on thrills. Indeed, four of the top 10 sites focus on road maps.
We think our selection is rather more interesting – and useful. Decide for
yourselves.
EasyJet.com
Recently relaunched to incorporate fully inclusive pricing, the EasyJet
website is as deceptively simple as the airline behind it. The whole booking
process – from searching dates to paying by credit card – can be polished
off in about three minutes. According to Team Stelios, 98% of EasyJet
passengers now book online. Which makes you wonder about the sanity of the
other 2% (if you book by phone, you can only book flights up to two weeks in
advance, and pay 65p/min for the privilege). Just one caveat: because
EasyJet.com is such a breeze to navigate, you may be tempted to use it to
book your hotel, car hire, airport parking and so on. Don’t, because you can
usually find better deals elsewhere.
Travelsupermarket.com
And this is where you’ll find them. Travelsupermarket.com is the UK’s most
successful comparison site, taking only a few seconds to sift through
thousands of “live” quotes for flights, hotels and travel insurance. The
company, recently valued on the stock market at more than £800m, doesn’t
actually sell anything – it just refers you to the sites with the best
prices. Click through and you should find yourself on the relevant booking
page. You should remember that Travelsupermarket.com is not infallible,
because websites that have not paid to be featured in its listings don’t
appear here. To be sure you’ve got the best deal, compare results on its
rivals Traveljungle.co.uk and, for
car hire, Carrentals.co.uk .
Wayn.com
Once upon a time, in the early days of the internet, travellers would post
messages to each other on bulletin boards such as Lonely Planet’s Thorn
Tree. With the arrival of Web 2.0 and social-networking sites such as
MySpace and Facebook, that now seems terribly quaint. The latest way for
travellers to get in touch and – let’s be honest here – flirt with each
other is by visiting travel-networking sites such as Wayn.com – the name is
short for Where Are You Now? Based in the UK, this site claims to be the
world’s biggest travel community, with more than 8m members. Chances are,
your soul mate is in there.
Laterooms.com
When we first wrote about Laterooms.com, in May 2000, the site was
revolutionary – a place where hoteliers could quietly offload their unsold
rooms (what’s known in the business as “distressed inventory”) at
rock-bottom rates. Now it’s owned by First Choice, the formula remains
unchanged: by booking up to seven days in advance, you can grab discounts of
up to 70% on published room rates. There have been some improvements: the
selection is now vast, and, as of this month, you can search for deals on
web-enabled mobile phones. If you still draw a blank, you can try rival
Wotif.com, which has the added advantage of a 28-day booking window.
Timesonline.co.uk/travel
Yes, we’re blowing our own trumpet here. But where else can you find more than
5,000 skilfully written and carefully researched travel articles, all easily
searchable? Once inspired, you can also find exclusive deals on thousands of
hotels, villas and apartments. And if you want the latest travel blogs,
webcams, websites and internet booking tips, you can check out
timesonline.co.uk/ onlinetravel.
Worldweather.wmo.int
With floods at home and heat waves in the southern Mediterranean, it is
becoming more difficult – and more important – than ever to get the weather
right when booking a holiday. Finding accurate and unbiased information
isn’t always easy. Some tour operators and tourist boards provide sunshine
and rainfall figures on their web pages, but these can appear optimistic
when they’re compared with official meteorological statistics. If you want
to know for sure whether August is a good month to visit Barbados or if
there is likely to be rain in the Maldives in October, go to the World
Weather Information Service, run by the World Meteorological Organization.
Though the site is unlikely to win any design awards, it draws on official
data to create forecasts for the next few days; it also gives monthly
average temperatures, rainfall totals and the number of days that are likely
to be rain-affected in more than 1,200 locations.
Simplyparking.co.uk
Another comparison site, and this one does exactly what it says on the tin.
Select one of 24 airports across the UK, type in your travel dates, and it
will find the best available parking deals, with choices both on and off
site. Before booking, you can read reviews from previous customers, who
award marks for customer service, value for money, facilities and transfers.
The site will also find deals on airport hotels, airport lounges and
meet-and-greet valet parkers.
Multimap.com
If you’re bemused by the huge popularity of mapping sites, a few minutes on
Multimap should be enough to enlighten you. Its newly revamped UK street
maps are packed with useful detail, and the driving directions are clear and
easy to print. The site remembers your previous searches and allows you to
send maps to your mobile phone. Coverage stretches from London to Zimbabwe,
albeit in rather less detail.
(See also the Times
Online' review of revamped multimap.co.uk: Ed)
TripAdvisor.co.uk
The success of user-generated content sites such as TripAdvisor is based on a
curious paradox: professional hotel reviews, whether penned by travel
writers or specialist tour operators, are often treated with suspicion,
while extreme views posted anonymously online are viewed as more “real”. In
fact, some of them are not real at all, but written by overenthusiastic
hoteliers or individuals with grudges. That said, with more than 10m
reviews, TripAdvisor has achieved critical mass. Its aggregated ratings –
some hotels have 50 or more reviews – tend to be reliable indicators, and it
is getting better at weeding out fraudulent submissions.
Expedia.co.uk
Since its launch in 1998, Expedia has eschewed bells and whistles and
concentrated on building a huge inventory of hotels, flights, holidays and
car-hire deals, and a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness.
Essentially, it is a modern incarnation of the old-fashioned high-street
travel agent, stolid rather than flashy. Although the company owns
TripAdvisor, it has built up its own, more reliable collection of hotel
reviews: only customers who have booked a stay at a hotel through Expedia
can post a review. The company says that within the next six months it will
add more multimedia content (there is talk of videos, photos and even
incorporating TripAdvisor reviews). We’d advise caution. We like Expedia
because it’s boring.
Top 10 by hits
1 Multimap.com – king of the map sites (see
main article)
2 Maps.google.co.uk – a world of
interactive and customisable maps, full of geeky features and also including
new 360-degree street photography.
3 TheAA.com – everything from hotel bookings to
driving tips abroad, from the AA man.
4 EasyJet.com (see main article).
5 Expedia.co.uk (see main article).
6 TheAA.com/travelwatch– road maps
and travel directions.
7 Streetmap.co.uk – more maps.
8 Thomson.co.uk – Thomson’s new site is
packed with multimedia gizmos, although it looks like a work in progress.
9 Nationalrail.co.uk – online train
timetables; dull, but useful.
10 Lastminute.com – the jaunty design
disguises an increasingly conservative offering of travel and entertainment.
Rankings from Hitwise, based on numbers of visits, June 2007
I agree wholeheartedly about TripAdvisor being unreliable.
I've recently discovered a number of smaller "niche" travel websites like Extravigator.com and aSmallWorld.net (aSW is ultra-private, you need to be invited) that are focussed on discussing upscale travel options. They tend to have much smaller, more refined and trustworthy discussions and opinions being expressed amongst their communities.
There are plenty of these niche travel sites on the Internet (ones for campers, food obsessed, etc) and I should think that the Times could easily do a list of these more specialised travel sites that are springing up these days.
Todd Rutherford, London, UK
for hotels its worth checking http://www.trivago.co.uk they have a price comparison that checks more players than other sites
Johann, hamburg, germany
I could not agree more with John's comment re TripAdvisor. I work in hotel contracting for major tour operators and know hoteliers who regularly post bad comments about their competition and good ones about themselves - the site, whilst set up with the best of intentions is now a farce and not to be trusted.
Peter Wilson, Witney, UK
Tripadvisor reviews are unreliable. Reviewers can use just any old name and its easy to set up an anonymous email address and use that to register. You don’t need to give an address or telephone number and the postcode field is optional.
Tripadvisor require no evidence that the contributor has even stayed at the establishment, let alone anything to support their review, be it negative or positive. So it’s easy to write what you like about a place you’ve never even stayed at.
That makes it so easy for users to post untrue reviews and remain completely anonymous, even to Tripadvisor. It also opens the way for Hoteliers themselves to post positive reviews in respect of their own establishments or even negative reviews about their competitors.
And that’s where Tripadvisor falls down. Because of its own inadequacies, I don’t believe it should be recommended at all as a reliable guide to planning a holiday because you simply can’t be sure that the reviews are accurate or genuine.
John Thorogood, Exeter, UK
if you want to check hotel before you go, try http://www.tvtrip.co.uk
You can see videos, it give you a better idea
Fred, London, England
SideStep.co.uk should definitely be on your list. It's a price comparison site for flights, hotels car hire etc. And apart from finding great deals, what I like best about it is the filter system that comes up alongside your flight results. It allows you to refine your results according to flight times, airports etc. and is a genuinely useful tool.
Jo, London,
Frommer's is my go-to, now that i'm no longer a backpacker. In Europe I love Karen Brown's recommendations. I-escape (www.i-escape.com) always has good ideas for unique hotels. In Latin America I always use On The Road Travel (www.ontheroadtravel.com) for up-to-date recommendations.
Tracy, New York,
If the Times can plug their own travel website, then I shall follow their lead. If you wan to see more of the real Europe by getting, even slightly, off the beaten track, my site has destination guides, accommodation and a blog:
http://www.europealacarte.co.uk
Karen Bryan, Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland
I'm surprised SideStep isn't on the list. By far the best offerings, I've found.
Sarah Tourdour, Wimbledon, UK
Depends on the type of travel you're doing, lonely planet(and its thorn tree) + hostels/hostelz/hostelworld are invaluable for backpacking.
Trip advisor or the lesser used british forum holiday truths for hotels and package deals.
Frommers has excellent city guides.
Jaqs, london,
I've been glued to this site - a travel blog - for a while. A great read.
http://adamcathro.blogspot.com/
Enjoy
Jack de Villiers, Nottingham, East Midlands
I am surprised that Skyscanner.net is not up in the top three. It is way better than Kayak, epodo and others.
Declan Deasy, Portlaoise, Ireland
For Hotels in Europe try Venere.com in association with Tripadvisor. Cross reference reviews on Hotels and you will minimize the chances of a poor Hotel. It hasn't failed me in 5 years.
John, manchester,
I like onebagger.squarespace.com for light travel tips - one-bag style.
Felix, London,
Personally one of the best travel web sites I have used recently is Kuoni , almost limitless options and not half bad prices either, but my altime fav is Virgin
dave tole, liverpool, uk