Trip Advisor UK
Trip Advisor UK is a very versatile service with a great and easy-to-navigate web site. While you could say that Trip Advisor UK is a flight scanner too, it also is a whole lot more than that. So let’s dig in and see what Trip Advisor UK has to offer, shall we?
The main ingredient to succes that makes Trip Advisor UK so great is their versatile search function. Titled “Plan the Perfect Trip”, it is probably not far off. The pre-loaded search is the one for hotels, which is also placed on top of all the other search links. Here, you simply enter the city you’re travelling to, check-in and check-out dates, along with the number of people staying at the hotel, and hit the “Find Hotels” button. That’s about as simple as it gets, to find a hotel using Trip Advisor UK.
Moving on, we get to what I referred to above as the flight scanner. This function will let you search for flights to and from just about any destination. Just as simply designed as Trip Advisor UK’s hotel search, it will dig up seats to book on lots of flights.
Next in line is the restaurant search. Boasting a selection of more than 700,00 restaurants world-wide, in over 40,000 cities, all you have to do is enter the name of your destination city, hit enter, and you’ll be presented with a wide array of alternatives to choose from.
The “Things to Do” search is actually quite interesting. You can use this one to search the city of your destination for attractions, nightlife, tours or shopping. All you have to do is enter the name of the city, choose one of the four alternatives above and hit enter. Quite nifty, I’d have to say, as very few travel sites online tend to offer this kind of search.
Next up in the menu you get to “Cruises”. Although this appears to offer a lot of alternatives, they are actually all off-site, on Trip Advisor UK’s sister site Cruise Critic. Nevertheless, you get direct links to reviews of most cruise lines and cruise experiences, so it makes no difference that they are off-site.
Holiday rentals is the next link in the menu and it works the same way as the ones above it. You enter the city of destination, or the region, choose check-in and check-out dates, and hit enter. This will search for flats and houses to rent in the region you desire.
In the Photos & Videos section you’ll be able to visually experience many places where the users of the site have travelled, thus providing you with a better beforehand experience. This is a great way to check things out for yourself, prior to getting there, so you don’t rely only on the marketing materials provided by the travel agents.
Finally you have what is probably the most valuable feature of the site, the discussion forums. Categorised by parts of the worlds and important topics, the forums are a huge asset to Trip Advisor UK’s visitors, as they can read and participate in lengthy discussions about travel and vacations. Asking questions and sharing experiences with other forum users can be truly invaluable prior to taking a trip anywhere. Here you can get advice on virtually everything that has to do with travel, things to do at any location and things to avoid doing at any location. Again, this is a truly powerful tool to use as part of your visit to Trip Advisor UK!
And finally, here’s a very nifty trick – if you use FireFox as your web browser then you can use this handy little addon to search for hotels directly in your browser, from Trip Advisor UK.