The Virgin Internet Travel Guide (Virgin Internet Guide S.) - Softcover

Winder, Davey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753504413 ISBN 13: 9780753504413

Publisher: Virgin Books, 2000

Synopsis

A guide aimed at all who wish to harness the power of the web to find the best deals and destinations. Every website has been checked for security and usefulness. As well as online travel agents, it contains backpackers' gossip, great hotels, recommended itineraries and news of events worldwide.

About this title

Review

Do we need travel agents any more? Not according to The Virgin Internet Travel Guide. With the Internet has come "the opportunity for everybody, whether or not they have their own PC, to cut out the middleman and make their own travel bookings directly," writes author Davey Winder. His book, however, covers much more than holiday booking online. There are sections on finding general travel information (eg exchange rates or weather), activity holidays (eg cycling, whale-watching), luxury travel and resources for long-haul travellers like cyber cafe locations and Web discussion forums. The longest section is a country-by-country listing of sites with local information, ranging from government-sponsored sites to unofficial sites full of experienced travellers' tips.

Following the fashion in Internet guides, the book is small--pocket-sized--but the listings are sufficiently detailed. There are 2-4 line reviews of most sites listed, which are informative if somewhat chirpy (here's the review of Virgin Atlantic's site: "A very snazzy, well very red actually, Web site--and excellent online booking and information resources"). The author has dug up sites with information on countries from Libya (a personal audio greeting from Colonel Qaddafi)to Micronesia. The first two sections cover Internet basics, which seems an unnecessary inclusion, since anyone seeking to learn to use the Internet has most likely already bought a beginners' guide. The lack of an index of sites makes looking up a specific travel site difficult. Still, there's a wealth of information here: travel agents beware.--Kathleen Keefe

From the Author

The pocket sized guide to the best travel resources online.
This book is not a guide to the Internet but instead a comprehensive listing of more than 1000 travel related websites, newsgroups and services.

It is a collection of signposts to the travel related services and sites that can all too easily be all too difficult to track down when time and resources are limited.

Use the guide to reveal the best online tourist guides, the cheapest flights and the best accomodation. But beyond the obvious it also uncovers insider travel tips from people who have been there, done that and got the website to prove it.

My brief was a simple one: produce a book that filters the best of online travel resources into a pocket sized guide. It turned into a labour of love involving hours on end, day and night, over many weeks spent trawling the Net for the best travel related websites I could find. Some of these were hidden many links deep, taking many hours of browsing to reveal - but the end result was worth it.

That result is a small pocket sized bookof 250 pages, divided into categories such as searching tips for the online traveller, an advisory section detailing embassies online, currency exchange, maps etc, destination guides, activity holidays, transport, accomodation, a little bit of luxury and a whole lot more.

I'll admit that I am biased, any fool can see that, but at less than a fiver the book is remarkable value in my opinion (I would say I don't know how Virgin can do it at the price - but the truth is they got me to work cheap). What's more, it's a book that I actually use, if not every day then certainly every week. As a busy traveller myself I keep one copy on my desk and another in my pocket (go on, buy two, you know it makes sense) and would literally be lost without them now.

Davey Winder is Contributing Editor of PC Pro magazine, Founder Member of the Internet Society of England and a former Technology Journalist of the Year.

Edition details

• Publisher: Virgin Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0753504413
• ISBN 13: 9780753504413
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256