This is the age of the social network. Facebook recently overtook Google in terms of internet traffic, and with around 500 million members, it would be the third biggest country in the world.
Travel is no exception. There are numerous travel social networks, and many of them provide a lot of value. But they were not created equal. These are the top ten travel social networks, and what you should be using them for.
Tripatini: ASK A TRAVEL EXPERT. Once described as “Facebook for travellers” by the New York Post, Tripatini is notable for bringing together travellers with travel experts, be it travel journalists, publicists, agents, vendors, or other local experts. In line with their slogan “The Social Network for Travelers & Travel Experts”, Tripatini members can connect and interact with industry insiders, which makes it a valuable resource if you’re a traveller in need of useful information. Instead of only receiving tips from fellow travellers (often the case on other networks), you also get more access to the professionals who can give you the insider tip that will make your travel experience truly memorable. And this in turn allows travel industry professionals to build followers for their own services by providing expert advice. Tripatini’s Ask a Travel Expert forum even features a widget you can embed on your desktop, blog or Website to help your site visitors get professional answers… or to help the pros keep tabs on the latest questions they can offer their expertise on. As well as eliminating the traditional barriers between travellers and professionals, Tripatini provides unique, informative travel content such as destination spotlights, user-generated blogs, image galleries and newsfeeds through their ever-growing community. Arthur Frommer proclaimed himself “simply impressed – enormously impressed – by it”
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Declutter
Unless you get the builders in, you can’t easily increase the size of your property. But you can make it look bigger. How? By decluttering. Decluttering is easier than you may think and it’s amazing how much more attractive it will make a holiday apartment.
1 – Size the job up
Your first step to freeing up space in your property is to decide what you’re going to remove – and how and where you’ll store it. The more items you can get into uniformly sized boxes the better, as this makes it easier to stack and store in a storage room. Similarly, ensure that the heavier, more robust items are placed on the floor with lighter, more fragile items and anything of awkward shape placed at the top. In terms of stacking – three to four boxes high is ideal. Think too about the things you’ll need regular access to – and leave these near the front of your room. Read more »
Tags: decluttering, holiday apartment
With the proliferation of travel guides currently in existence, you might be wondering how to choose between them! With the growing importance of social media in most of our online lives, it’s worth having a look at TripWolf.com, which takes the travel guide to a new level. TripWolf is a free online social travel guide. Though that’s quite a mouthful, TripWolf provides quite a lot for the modern type of traveler who embraces free Wi-Fi like they would a Eurail pass.
TripWolf combines user-generated text and reviews with professional content, some even from the well-known guidebooks by Footprint. You can find and leave your own hotel and restaurant reviews, as well as get all the practical information you’ll need like addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and even maps. The trip planner is the most convenient aspect – choose the points of interest you plan to visit, and a map and itinerary can be downloaded and printed in a compact PDF file, for free! Read more »
Tags: iPhone application, travel guide, trip planner, TripWolf, TripWolf blog, TripWolf iPhone app
Earlier in the year, Arnaud and I went to a conference where we met Alistair Hann and Rachel Armitage, two of the founders of Zoombu.com. We were very interested in their product and we’d like to introduce it to you today.
Zoombu is a travel search engine that finds the best route to reach your destination. Zoombu compares flights, ferries, trains, driving, and transfers in a single search, and finds the cheapest, fastest or greenest door-to-door way to reach your destination. Currently focussed on Europe, Zoombu is fully independent and takes into account prices and journey details for thousands of route options involving 150 airlines, 100 ferry operators, 50 hire car providers, multiple specialist transfer firms and local bus and train services. Read more »
Tags: compare flights, compare transport, travel search engine, zoombu
Marathon Match at Wimbledon
We’ll start and end this post in London, where the tennis championships at Wimbledon are coming to the end of a first week that’s yielded all sorts of records. By far the most impressive is the marathon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, which ended on Thursday after over eleven hours of play spread over three extraordinary days. Isner finally won 70-68 in a fifth set that lasted longer than any entire match in tennis history. Both players served over 100 aces.
Elsewhere in London, a prominent museum has been accused of doctoring a famous photo of Winston Churchill. Churchill, one of the most outspoken politicians of the twentieth century, seems to have posthumously fallen victim to a bizarre political correctness stunt. The famous photo of Churchill has allegedly been airbrushed to remove his trademark cigar…although no-one is owning up to it.
Original
Edited version
If you’re not into sport, you must be sick of the World Cup already. But South Africa’s still worth a visit. Sun City is home to Read more »
Tags: air transat, best in travel, churchill, complaint letter, harry potter, isner, letter, lion burger, London, mahut, marathon, photo, richard branson, sandy russell, south africa, sun city, virgin, wimbledon
A story that is all over the travel blogs this week is TripAdvisor’s new Trip Friends feature, which taps into the success of the hugely popular TripAdvisor app on Facebook, “Cities I’ve Visited”. By signing into Facebook using Facebook Connect, TripAdvisor users will be able to see which of their friends have been to a particular destination and ask advice from them, either on their wall or by personal message. It looks like a very interesting feature.
But perhaps the most interesting news of the week came on the world’s oceans.
Abby Sunderland. Photograph: Lisa Gizara/EPA
First, Abby Sunderland, the 16 year old Californian sailor aiming to become the youngest person to perform a solo, non-stop circumnavigation of the globe, was rescued this week after being briefly lost at sea. After 50 foot waves in the Southern Indian Ocean had broken the mast of her yacht Wild Eyes and destroyed all satellite communications, Sunderland was picked up by a French vessel. Her parents have been criticised for allowing their daughter to make the attempt at an unsuitable time of year.
In a more successful story, the Around the Americas crew have completed the first circumnavigation of the Americas after 13 months at sea, including a dangerous crossing of the legendary Northwest Passage. Lying above Canada in the Arctic Ocean, the passage has only recently become navigable. The voyage has included much scientific recording about the state of the oceans.
And perhaps the most bizarre story of all was Read more »
Tags: abby sunderland, around the americas, camera, dick de bruin, easyjet, irene ferrari, jordan romero, sea turtle, stelios, trip friends, tripadvisor, wizarding world of harry potter
The top holiday apartments in one of the world’s greatest cities. What more could you want from a holiday? These were the most popular holiday apartments in Paris during May.
From 67€
From 110€
From 110€
From 110€
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Tags: holiday apartments, holiday apartments Paris, Paris, top holiday apartments, top ten, top vacation rentals, vacation rentals, vacation rentals paris
Hi everyone. Our Friday round-up is a bit late this week. Apologies and let’s get on with it – there have been some fascinating stories circulating the web this week!
You may remember reading in last week’s post about the tropical storm that devastated Guatemala, causing an extraordinary 200 foot sinkhole that swallowed an entire road junction in Guatemala City.
Pacaya volcano lava rivers
Now the Pacaya volcano has erupted, killing a reporter. The extraordinary lava rivers have been one of Guatamala’s premier tourist attractions for years, but they are now threatening to engulf nearby villages.
Fortunately, there is better news elsewhere in Guatemala. A commendable project called Maya Pedal is making manual tasks easier by providing locals with bicimáquinas (bicycles that power machines) which can grind corn, pump water and hull coffee beans. With no need for electricity, the initiative is eminently sustainable.
It’s one of several development projects that caught my attention this week. Another is a bizarre Read more »
Tags: ai feng, BA, best in travel, corona, dulux, france, guatemala, iphone, maya pedal, most expensive holiday, pacaya volcano, save the beach, Switzerland, tony woodley, world expo
Arthur Frommer, the legendary travel writer, publisher and consumer advocate, has once again named the growing popularity of holiday apartments as a hot travel trend.
Holiday apartment in Paris
As regular readers know, we at HouseTrip tend to keep a close eye on what Frommer is saying. He has regularly referred to holiday apartments as a good way for Americans to save money in Europe, and now he has referred to the increasing consumer preference for holiday apartments over hotel rooms as one of 7 recent trends in trans-Atlantic travel.
Along with the growing popularity of foreign aggregators, small group tours, intellectual tours and budget airlines, Frommer cited the elimination of admission fees to UK attractions and the increase in airline fees as the other major recent trends.
In the week that the Colosseum announced plans to open its famous underground passages to the world, a bizarre story emerged about the Russian man who is creating his own subway tunnels underneath his home. Equally bizarre was the amusing precedent set by a Swiss court, which upheld an Appellenzer hiker’s claim that he should be allowed to hike naked.
Meanwhile, the adventurers of the world were not on the mountains but on the high seas. Crazy Scotsman Don Lennox is not only attempting to break the record for the fastest row across the Atlantic; he will then run coast to coast across America, hoping to complete both feats in under 100 days and raise $1m for charity in the process.
Further North, Norwegian explorers Borge Ousland and Thorleif Thorleifsson will soon embark on a daring attempt to sail around the North Pole, which was previously thought impossible. All of that must seem like an awful lot of effort for Jonathan Trappe, who leisurely floated across the English Channel under a bundle of helium balloons.
One wonders if similar methods might end up being a last resort for Read more »
Tags: agatha, borge ousland, british airways, colosseum, concorde, drunk parrots, europe, guatemala, jonathan trappe, rome, sinkhole, thorleif thorleifsson, tourism australia, Travel
HouseTrip.com Blog – The official blog for holiday apartments
