I am glad to see that this issue is being addressed by several companies. Trip Advisor employs a team of fraud investigators using software to highlight inconsistencies in reviews. Hotels found guilty of gerrymandering will be named and shamed and their popularity ranking will drop. I do think that you require appropiate deterents in place [...]

Plans released for a new 5 star hotel in Edinburgh have been lambasted by heritage groups Their criticism is that the hotel buidling will not blend in with the character of the old town and that a listed buidling will be demolished to make way for the hotel construction. Given that the location of this [...]

Cottages.co.uk, an online guide to independent cottage booking agencies has seen a doubling of enquiries during January this year. compared to 2006. It citied reasons such as increses in interest rates and APD, tougher US immigration procedures, the strong euro and global warming as possible explanations for this increase. I have been anticipating this change [...]

New research shows that UGC is more trusted than travel agents sites. I don’t think that these findings are exactly ground breaking. I would have expected a higher percentage of people it’s only 20% to trust user generated reviews than trust content on travel agents’ sites, that stands at 12%. I have discussed this topic [...]

I read the guest blog on Travel Rants entitled “Can kids travel?“. I’ve been thinking about my rather negative response pasted below. “I am not sure about encouraging families with young kids to travel. We went to Greece when our twin sons were just over one year old. The brake on the twin buggy was [...]

If you are are looking for a UK holiday with low cost accommodation then a mobile home at one of Haven Holidays sites could be the solution. They are offering half price holidays for many dates except school holidays and bank holidays. There are different grades of mobile home, from basic (but still with shower, [...]

Many holiday accommodation bookings are now made on links from airline booking websites, with the airline making commission from these sales. In the past I found two problems with these linked accommodation sites. Often there was little or no accommodation in the less well known destinations and the price of the accommodation was often available [...]

There are calls for an independent audit of holiday accommodation to ensure that it meets UK standards. This is part of a campaign to raise awareness of carbon monoxide poisoning. I wonder how long this would take to implement and what the cost will be?

The Italian government is to allow Italian cities and towns to charge a tourist tax of up to 5 euros per day. This money would have to be spent on local tourist services. Each city can choose whether to levy the tax, it could only be for certain times of the year, exemptions could be [...]