Announcing the Travel Rants Consumer Awards
Written by Karen Bryan
Here are the winners of the Travel Rants Consumer Awards. Congratulations to all the winners and especially to Trip Advisor which won in two categories, Best Travel Planning and Best Holiday and Hotel Reviews. I’ve added my own comments about the various travel content sites.
Best Travel Blog
The Europe a la Carte blog was nominated in this category but was trounced by the competition. However it was an honour to be nominated for Best Travel Blog. Well done to Traveling Mamas. I’ve only read a few posts in the Traveling Mamas blog, as our kids are grown up now.
Best corporate travel blog
I really like the Euro Cheapo blog but and am inclined to read it because it’s focus is on budget travel in Europe, similar to that of the Europe a la Carte blog.
Best trip planning site
I haven’t used Trip Advisor for trip planning, only for reviews.
Best for travel content
Matador has loads of great travel content but I haven’t used it much.
Best designed travel website
I must amid that I hardly ever look at the Lonely Planet site.
Best travel comparison site
I’ve not been impressed by Kayak UK’s performance as an accommodation price comparison tool, finding it to be a damp squib I much prefer HotelsCombined.com. However Andy Hayes of the Europe a la Carte blogging team rated Kayak highly for flight comparison.
Best online travel tool
As I mainly fly within Europe on budget airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet which don’t have allocated seating, I haven’t used Seat Guru. However it does appear to have a lot of detailed information about seating on different aircraft which will be really useful to some travellers.
Best travel forum
I haven’t used Thorntree.
Best site for holiday and hotel reviews
I almost always have a look at the accommodation reviews on Trip Advisor when I’m searching for accommodation just to check out my intended accommodation hasn’t received a slew of negative comments
Best newspaper travel portal
As I live in the UK I’m more inclined to read the Guardian, Times or Telegraph travel sections.
Did your favourite travel content sites fare well in the Travel Rants Consumer Awards?
I find it interesting that you give such great prominence to a very American persective on travel. Given your affection for Europe, and your business focus on Europe, why not publicise website and ventures that foreground European travel. You often quote TRIPADVISOR, as for example in a recent post on Brussels, but you ignore the galaxy of European websites that map onto your interests. Why not more mention of European rail booking websites, more mention of European media, etc. I am Spanish, work in Hungary and yet still I look first to English language publications like Granta, Wanderlust and Hidden Europe Magazine for top class travel writing. Yet these seem not to feature in your horizons.
Pedro
Pedro. thanks for you comment. I wrote about the Travel Rants award as Travel Rants is a UK based travel blog and the Europe a la Carte was nominated in the Best Travel Blog category. Yet most of the nominations were indeed for US based travel content sites.
i’m the editor of the Europe a la Carte blog, there are several other members of the blogging team and I don’t dictate what they should write about. It’s hard to get the balance right as I don’t want the Europe a la Carte blog to be too parochial and the US is a large market for travellers looking for information to help plan their trip to Europe.