1. “You’ll never guess who I had in the back of my plane…” and more stories from the galley are told on this blog, the Professional Pilots’ Rumour Network. According to some 100 or more posts under the topic of “your nicest celebrities”, Prince William is a gent and Boris Becker a bore – that’s according to the cabin crew. There’s no way of verifying their authenticity, but the technical nature of some of the posts look baffling enough to be from genuine airline industry insiders. We love the quote allegedly from Becker: “Hello, I do not vish to be disturbed, I vill tell you when I wish to be fed, and I vill NOT sign any autographs”.

2. Seatguru.com has a new rival in seatplans.com, which launched at the end of last month, and offers aircraft seating plans and flight reviews. Most of the reviews are from the team at Business Traveller magazine, the publication behind the website. User reviews are relatively thin on the ground at this stage, but with a free and quick registration process, these should grow. There’s a useful landing page for each airline, with links to details about in-flight entertainment, loyalty schemes, lounges, and more. And in most instances, airline pages feature pictures of the fleet and the seats, plus schematics of the aircraft.

3. Thetrainline.com has relaunched its website, claiming it is now easier for rail travellers to find cheap fares. The “Best Fare Finder” returns fares based on searches made by other users – it’s currently available on selected routes only. It informs users when to travel to avoid high prices – so you need to be flexible to benefit. There’s also an improved seat selection tool at the booking stage, which offers preferences such as forward or backward-facing and proximity to power socket/toilet/luggage rack. And finally, an option to get a text message reminder of your booking. The site has also changed its charging structure - a £1 booking fee per transaction is added, and a £2.50 credit card fee still stands (it is free to pay with a debit card).

4. There is a website that knows you better than you know yourself – the “Hotels.com Visualiser” – and we love it. Choose from a series of pictures to select the style of hotel or experience you like best, choose a destination (or not if you’re flexible), and the site suggests what you might like. These choices could easily be replaced by a drop-down of options such as “romantic hotels”, “active holiday”, “fine dining”, and so on, but the pictures are more fun. The results are pulled from the Hotels.com database of more than 80,000 hotels, and can be filtered by using modern-to-traditional and no-frills-to-luxury sliders. Properties feature descriptions, pictures and user reviews in places.

50 best travel websites of 2007

Another year of innovation and refinement as travel websites continue to become more niche, focussed and useful

BACKGROUND

• The 10 hottest travel websites to watch

• 10 travel websites to watch: July

• 10 travel websites to watch: June

• 10 travel websites to watch: May

• 10 travel websites to watch: April

Times Online's top 100 travel websites

Once again, we've crawled, clicked and crashed our way around the world of internet travel to bring you our top 100 travel websites in 2009

5. Boutique hotel site Mr & Mrs Smith has launched an interactive route planner that helps users plan a journey around its hotel, restaurant and pub recommendations alongside information like attractions, service stations and parks. There’s the option for road map or Virtual Earth views – which means you can see just how bucolic that picnic spot is – or how rural that “traditional country pub”. Using the site should see an end to a soggy service station sandwich when there’s a gastro pub hidden a mile down the road.

6. Virgin Holidays has teamed up with Hip Hotels author Herbert Ypma to offer a collection of some 100 hotels around the world, singled out for their style. The www.vhiphotels.co.uk website offers a search by destination, or you can call one of their “travel gurus” to advise. The “glimpse” or “oggle” feature is fun – giving you the full or partial low-down, with pictures and a sidebar showing the average weather and Google map locator. These are hotels you can book on plenty of other sites, but the stylish imagery and simple navigation make this one fun to use. If you’re one of the few to get a bonus this year, this is a good place to spend it.

7. Staying fit on the road is notoriously difficult – but imagine if your mobile phone was barking orders at you… Slimtree offers fitness workouts downloadable to a computer, PDA or phone, so you can take a personal trainer in your pocket. The exercise videos are led by fitness instructors and cost $1.49 per 10 or 20-minute programme to download. There’s different ones, like yoga, aerobics or dance to choose from and the download can be viewed for up to 30 days. If you go direct to the website the videos are free to watch once you’ve registered, and you can keep an exercise journal on the site and upload before and after photographs to the envy of other slimmers.

8. Tripadvisor.com is not the only hotel review website according to www.trivago.co.uk, a travel community and comparison site. It’s launched a hotel review meta-search, which trawls three million reviews of 120,000 hotels. The reviews come from a variety of travel websites including Frommers, Fodors and Gayot.com, but crucially, not Tripadvisor. The average hotel rating, gleaned from a variety of sources, is handy, but it’s no one-stop-shop just yet. Watch this space.

9. RogerandRandy.com (if you can get it past your explicit terminology firewall detector) is a new website launched by business travel experts, Roger Collis and Randy Petersen. The former is an author and has a weekly travel column in the International Herald Tribune, the latter a frequent flyer programme buff and founder of successful nerdy sites including FlyerTalk.com. Their combined effort scores poorly for design but the content is a winner – particularly the Q&As, listed by category. R&R have answered each question tirelessly, plus there’s ongoing debates and links to the founders’ favourite travel websites.

10. The Great Hotels of the World website is looking very Web 2.0 after its relaunch last month. Together with sister site, Special Hotels of the World it’s had a complete overhaul, adding user reviews and photos, online messaging facility to talk to a booking agent, plus soon there’ll be a community area for fans of the sites to converse. The site has also launched a honeymoon wedding list service, allowing couples to register their desired destination, and create an account where friends can top up their holiday fund.

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