Real holiday reports.com

Monday, 29 Jan, 2002 0

Review by Adrian Mann, owner of Adrian Mann Design, providing independent reviews and analysis of travel web sites in the UK.

Realholidayreports.com was set up about a year ago by a group of friends, who identified the need for independent, unbiased reports written by true tourists who have actually been to the resorts.

Overall
It’s an extremely busy home page! There’s a lot going on, and consequently it can take over a minute to load if you’re using a 56kb modem, so there’s some scope for trimming there. There are lots of links and things to click on, so it might take some exploring before you find what you’re after.

Content
The core of the site is the holiday reports. These are organised by area – Canaries, Turkey, France and so on, covering all the most popular destinations, and some further afield. The most recent reports are prominently featured, and a ‘sun’ rating is used – 5 suns for excellent, to none for very poor. It’s easy to drill down and find the appropriate review, but it should be noted that it’s early days yet, and the coverage is not complete. The reviews come in two parts – an overall review, which rates the location, accommodation and kids clubs, and gives details of the date, operator, and number of people. More detailed scores can be found by viewing the individual category scores, and this gives ratings for items such as the cleanliness of the beach, quality of bars and restaurants, friendliness and helpfulness of the locals, and plenty of detail on the accommodation, such as meal quality, décor, cleaning frequency, children’s facilities and more.

The individual travellers comments vary from a couple of sentences, which will give an overall flavour, to highly detailed reviews of the resort and it’s facilities. Unsurprisingly, the more detailed reports tend to be the less favourable ones, and some people have a lot to say about their experiences! However, the majority of the reports are, on the whole, quite complimentary, and provide some useful, real-world information.

The information button is a little puzzling. The intention would seem to be to provide background information on the resorts, such as weather, what to see and do and so on, but it was confusing to find information on Ibiza when looking at Malta, or on the Greek Islands when looking at Italy.

The Classifieds section features advertisements for accommodation, airport transfers, and villas for sale or rent. Again, the function of this area was confusing – clicking on Villas to Rent links to a page on Spanish Mainland resorts.

The Forums area allows users to ask for advice or information on a wide range of subjects, such as medical advice, passport advice, or comments and questions about tour operators and destinations. Again, the links didn’t function correctly, and I was unable to view any of the forums.

There are also areas covering links, contacts, site help, and a site search. The ‘Add Report’ section is well laid out and allows a wide range of facilities and factors to be rated, and there’s an area to add your own comments if you wish. Anyone adding a report will be entered into the prize draw – £500 is on offer to the lucky winner.

Summary
An excellent idea for a site, although the owners wisely make clear that the opinions expressed are not their own. The range of subjects that are ranked is good, and you should be able to form a reasonable opinion of the destination from what’s provided. There’s a bias towards those travellers with children, although this is no bad thing – the last thing you want when you’re on holiday is bored and complaining children, so it’s wise to check that they’ll be looked after before you go.

However, while the concept and content is good, the implementation leaves some room for improvement. As it stands, there are far to many broken links* and poor navigation to give this site a wholehearted recommendation, but it’s definitely worth using to see what real travellers make of the places they’ve stayed.

*Update from Adrian (31 January 2002): Most of the problems associated with the site have now been isolated and addressed, and it works fine on Windows/Explorer machines. The problems are now confined to Mac users, who may encounter database errors when using certain browser/OS combinations. I understand that the situation is being investigated, and steps will be taken to address these problems soon.