TRAVEL & HOLIDAY

2 Camels - Whether you want to witness Solstice at Abu Simbel in Egypt or cheese rolling on Gloucestershire, you can get all the details you need at this really useful site.

A View On Cities - This is an EXCELLENT travel website. It has maps, activities, hotel links, 1,000s of original city photos, building & city fact sheets and even quizzes. So, check this website and discover famous urban attractions ;-)

Abercrombie & Kent - Luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent has revamped its site, adding great location photography and new features. You can now browse for a holiday by destination, theme or desired experience, spanning such categories as adventure, relaxation, family trips and honeymoons. Notable journeys include searching for tigers on an Indian safari, navigating the iceberg-strewn channels of Antarctica, and a private viewing of Nefertari’s tomb in Egypt.

Active Adventures Windsurfing holidays in Lanzarote, Dahab and Wadi Lahami, Marsa Alam Egypt. Experience a days diving or enjoy their beginners scuba diving course. Their scuba diving courses are carried out at our PADI 5* Centre and BSAC Premier dive school.

Airfare Watchdog - Save money when booking flights online using AirFare Watchdog. Owned by TripAdvisor, this UK version of a popular US site lets you instantly view the lowest airfares by entering the name of a departure city on the homepage. It presents its hand-picked results as an alphabetical list from which you can choose a destination, and then view details and check availability for your desired dates. Alternatively, you can search for fares to a specific city or browse the Top 50 Fares to find out where is currently cheapest to fly to.

Amsterdam is often referred to as one of the most colourful cities in the world. And rightly so! Where else do you find so many places of interest, famous museums, cosy pubs and fun shops and flower markets? Let this site show you a great many of the surprising things Amsterdam has in store for you.

Athens - A useful site covering all the essential information for a break to Athens, from general information, transportation & maps to accommodation and travel information.

Australia

ABC Online - For 70 years ABC has been a distinctive part of the Australian way of life. Now it also has a great website.

Australia Street - A simple site that neatly captures the diversity of everyday Australian life.

BBQ Blue - To learn about the fine art of outdoor cooking Australian style, visit BBQ Blue.

Culture and Recreation - Tap into Aussie culture, past and present with events, exhibitions, articles and art.

Frog and Toad - A friendly, informative and colorful guide with pages of information, great graphics and useful links.

National Library of Australia - With links to most of the libraries in Australia along with seven million books, magazines, journals and newspapers, this is a great reference portal to history and current affairs.

Oz Search - Anyone with interest in Australia should bookmark this great search engine.

See Australia - A good-looking travel guide written from unusual perspective - as if you would actually need encouragement to discover the delights of Australia.

Action Asia

BeenThere has been launched by Guardian Unlimited to serve as an online global travel guide. It provides detailed profiles of both popular and lesser-known destinations, and combines articles written by Guardian staff with content and comment from users. Travellers can recommend hotels, restaurants and attractions; enter their holiday photos in a monthly competition; and rate the advice posted by others to give prominence to the best tips and tipsters.

Big Earth - If you want a more adventurous holiday than lying on a beach, Big Earth is worth dropping by. The site is neatly divided along three fronts: Plan, Share and Discover. Each category is intended to aid travellers on their journeys, offering maps and information about vaccinations, vehicle maintenance and taking photos on the go. There are also tips and advice from seasoned explorers and a growing community of travellers’ blogs from all corners of the world.

Bon Voyage rounds up the best cruise deals on the web and lets you pay for every aspect of your trip, including flights and hotels, through the site.

BookMe2 is part of Liverpool Cruise Club, with over 20 years experience of providing holidays for people all over the world, through the internet and their UK only based call centre. BookMe2 takes the pressure off your fingers by doing all the hard work for you. It lets you quickly compare the prices of flights and hotels – together or separately – from a variety of online sources, including budget airlines. BookMe2 caters for most European countries, as well as India, Egypt and the US, with the ability to arrange everything through the site – even car hire and insurance.

Bussines Traveler

By-car.co.uk - Provided you remember which side of the road to drive on, hiring a car for an overseas holiday can save both hassle and money. By-car.co.uk makes things even easier, by letting you book a vehicle online from more than 7,500 locations in 150 countries. It also features detailed car hire guides for popular destinations such as France, Italy and the USA, and general information about dealing with accidents and adverse weather conditions.

C'est So Paris - If you’re thinking about a visit to Paris then make sure you check out the C’est So Paris website first. It will not only give you the low-down on what’s going on in the French capital, but also give you some tips on how to behave like a typical Parisian and blend in to the crowds. This attractively-designed website has a Travel Tips section that will give you some suggestions as to what to do whether you’re a gourmet, a shopper or if you fancy a romantic break.

Cheap Flights - Click the letter corresponding to your destination to view the cheapest scheduled flights from hundreds of airlines.

Cheap holidays 123 - offers last minute holidays to Spain, Greece, Turkey, Portugal, Florida, Cyprus, Majorca, Madeira and many more. Bargain holidays, late deals and flights to all the Canary Islands including Tenerife, Lanzarote, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. Grab yourself a Greek deal in Kos, Zante, Corfu, Kefalonia and Crete. Head across the pond with our great deals to the Caribbean and Cancun, Mexico.

Columbus World Travel Guide - The guides might not be as detailed as some sites, but for the breadth of destinations covered, it's hard to beat.

Cruise1st.co.uk - Check here excellent offers on cruises around the world from companies like Cunard, P&O Cruises, Carnival, Costa, MSC Cruises, Royal Carrebean, Princess Cruises, etc.

CruiseCompare is fantastically easy to use - just specify where, when and how long you want to travel, your preferred cruise line (optional) and your approximate budget to view available offers from a range of travel agents. You can then compare prices for a specific cruise to discover the cheapest place to book - the difference between sites can often be hundreds of pounds.

DeckChair

Discover Cruises can offer an ideal holiday for people with most types of disabilities. There’s a dedicated section for first-time cruisers, which explains the different types of cruise – ultra luxury, expedition and so on – and what to expect. You can choose regions and ports on a world map to browse by destination and click through to one of 37 cruise operators to make your booking.

Discover Ireland - What separates Ireland from its neighbours is the arresting beauty of the land, the turbulent history of the island, the broad smile that welcomes your arrival and the heartfelt farewell that signals your departure. Discover Ireland, it's yours to enjoy.

Distinctly Different

Duty Free on Arrival - Buying duty-free goods before you board a plane means a lot more hand luggage to lug about. This site suggests you stock up on alcohol, perfume and other cheap products when you arrive at your airport and tells you exactly where you can do so. Just search for a country and select an airport to find out if duty-free shops are available on your arrival.

eBookers

Ecotravel - If you care about world's wildlife, economies and local traditions, check this website.

EnGrande owns and operates websites which offer travellers simple, instantly confirmed, online bookings for accommodation in different European cities. They currently offer instant booking confirmations for accommodation in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, London, Madrid, Mallorca, Paris, Prague, Rome, Sevilla, Valencia and rural Catalonia.

Europe by Eurostar covers topics such as cycling in Amsterdam, visiting the Sewer Museum in Paris and exploring the winding streets of old Nice. This attractive site makes effective use of Google Maps to show you places and points of interest and lets you browse by destination or type of activity, for example food and drink or art and culture. But the best aspect of Europe by Eurostar is that you can share travel advice and recommendations with other passengers, with the best tips collated in the blog. And, of course, you can book your Eurostar ticket online.

Expedia - Book hotel and flights separately or as packages. Look for 'special rates'. Great travel guides, too.

Fly.com is flight-comparison service that will find you the best deals on air travel with a single click. It will search every airline and a range of online travel agents to find the cheapest economy and premium fares, and then lets you refine the results to suit your requirements.

Fodors.com is one of the most useful online travel guides.

Footprint Travel Guides website provides information about a diverse range of countries, with particularly strong sections for Latin America and Asia, and sells PDFs of individual chapters from its books. There are useful tools that let you quickly find somewhere to sleep, eat and play in your chosen destination and a free iPhone app for getting travel advice on the move.

Frixo is a free service aimed at giving you up-to-date traffic news and information. Frixo specialises in traffic news and reports making it easy to use whether you're about to make a journey or out and about using their wireless service.

Gekko is an accommodation-recommendation service, that aims to find you hotels which match your needs, personality and budget. By taking you through the Gekko Profiler, Gekko can build your customized, individual profile and use this to make targeted recommendations from the largest collection of hotels online today.

Geneva - First time travellers to the Swiss city can find all the information they need here, including city maps, hotel online bookings, an events calendar and more.

German Places - This website is packed with useful and enticing tourist information on Germany. Using the Destinations menu you can learn about popular locations such as Potsdam, Cologne and the Bavarian Forest, while clicking on About Germany offers an overview of German history and culture. It’s an attractive, enjoyable site to browse, crammed with breathtaking photos.

Global Holidays - An independent travel agency that can supply you with the lowest prices and best deals from all the major airline networks and tour operators.

Go Glamping lets you find a luxury campsite in countries all over the world, although the main focus is on the UK with 48 in England alone. Whether you're looking to hire a vintage campervan, snuggle up in a shepherd's hut or have a pow-wow in a tepee, you'll find a company here who can help. Each entry is accompanied by photos, accommodation details, a link to the website and descriptive keyword tags such as ‘wildlife' and ‘organic'.

Goose on the Loose - Ordinary people can do extraordinary things - across-the-world trips and great websites included. Goose and Lucy prove it here.

High On Adventure

Honeymoon Magazine

Hostel World provides online bookings for hostels around the world. Check out things to do or read their destination guides to find out what’s hot and what’s not. Reserve your hostel online to ensure you have a bed waiting at your chosen destination!

Hotels.com Visualiser - This addition to Hotels.com offers an ingenious means of finding the perfect hotel room. Powered by social network Youniverse, it lets you select pictures to match your preferences, thus creating a ‘visual DNA’ profile. Options include everything from the style of room, your planned activities and the people you are travelling with.

JustYou - Travelling alone can be very frustrating, single room supplements being a particular issue. JustYou website is dedicated to the single traveller with holidays in every continent in the world. It is simple to search for holidays with a variety of criteria, including experiences as well as location.

LastMinute.com - Beautifully designed travel booking website where you can also book a night out, hire a car, buy a gift or even play bingo.

Live Abroad - Despite its US origins, there is a whole wealth of information for anyone thinking about travelling, or moving abroad.

Lunn Poly

Maingate Hotels - Search hotels near Disneyland Maingate in Anaheim, CA

Make the most of your trip abroad ! - Check out the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website to find out in a flash how best to avoid trouble. Packed with essential travel advice and tips, the website offers a wealth of country-specific information.

Microsoft Expedia

Mobissimo - This excellent travel search engine has been given a Web 2.0 overhaul to make planning and booking trips online quicker and easier than ever. From the homepage you can scour more than 170 sites for cheap flights, hotels and hire cars, as well as hunting for holidays by activity, for example beaches, theme parks and wine-tasting.

MyHoliday is offering you vacation rentals and holiday rentals in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Denmark and many other beautiful places. They can offer you villas, apartments, rural homes etc. ... 40.000 vacation rental properties all over the world.

MyTravel

National Geographic's Traveller

One Bag - If you are planning to travel around the world or head off into the jungle, you'll want to check into this site before you check in at the airport.

Opodo

Orlando Flights - Looking for Orlando flights? You search ends here. OneTravel offerrs the lowest Orlando flights deals online. Book now and go !

Palin's Travels - The ex-Python star has an infectious enthusiasm for travel that will shift even the laziest backside off the sofa and down to the nearest travel agent.

PitchUp.com - Keen caravanners and campers will love this comprehensive guide to sites throughout the UK and Ireland. This site ensures you’ll always find somewhere to pitch your tent by serving as a guide to more than 5,000 campsites and holiday parks in the UK and Ireland. The homepage lists current offers, reveals sites near beaches, festivals and places of interest, and features a range of search options.

Pocket Village - If you can’t decide where to go on holiday this year, ask Pocket Village. Described as a travel search engine, the site aggregates more than 11,000 interesting and adventurous tours and activities from 3,500 operators. For example, you could take a Tajine cookery course in Morocco, go on a ghost-walking tour in Venice or hike through the Andean highlands.

Priceline

Portland Direct

Porto - Forget the Algarve and try Porto, known as the 'cradle of Portugal'. Search for accommodation by hotel, boarding house, apartment or camping site.

Round the World Experts - This site features expert advice on round-the-world trips, from suggested routes for different price ranges to journals written by fellow travellers. You can plan your journey online, choosing up to different destinations, and submit your itinerary via an enquiry form. One of the experts will then contact you to discuss further details, though there’s no obligation to book.

Silver Lining Tours - If you are into storm and tornados chasing, check this website.

Simply Hike - Whether you’re looking for a tent or a pair of wellies, this outdoor-equipment store offers everything a happy camper could need. Prices are reasonable and the product-information page helpfully tells you when your order will be delivered if you place it now. You can buy goods without needing to register, and return unwanted items for FREE using Collect+.

SkyScanner is a flight search engine technology company. It is a self-financed enterprise that was started by three founders in 2003. They are a small company based in Edinburgh with a big ambition to become the number one, online resource for travel information.

STA Travel - One of the year’s biggest trends is the growth of social-networking sites aimed at travellers. This effort from STA Travel isn’t bad – you can upload photos and video clips, create a blog and link to a Google map. While it’s a little lacking in interactivity (communication between members is restricted to message boards rather than email), the site is wonderfully simple to use and makes creating a travel blog so incredibly easy that you’ll find yourself documenting your globe-trotting odysseys in no time at all.

Stuff Your Rucksack has been set up by broadcaster Kate Humble to help travellers find local charities in their planned destinations so they can provide much-needed items to help worthwhile projects. These ventures form the basis of the site in terms of content and design, and the success stories and photos of this who have received help are truly inspiring. You can search by project type or location and get suggestions for the type of items to take. With its honest - rather than profitable - intentions, Stuff Your Rucksack isn't preachy or condescending and has a really positive feel.

Summer Holidays - Accommodations for Summer Holidays in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Sunshine.co.uk focuses on cheap sun holidays, finding you low-cost package deals, budget flights and discounted hotels. You can browse the list of destinations and hotel chains for inspiration, search for somewhere specific or check out the featured holidays on the homepage. Particularly handy is the airport list, which shows you the best deals from your nearest airport.

Superbreak - Book a hotel online quickly, easily and cheaply at this relaunched site. Whether you’re looking to take in a show, catch the Eurostar to Paris or find somewhere to stay near the airport, smart navigation and photo-led content make it easy to find what you’re looking for, while the booking process has also been simplified.

TheFirstResort

The New York Times has added new features to its online Travel pages, letting globetrotters share their holiday online. Enter a destination into the search box and you can click through to readers’ suggestions, split into three categories – Where to Stay, Where to Eat and What to Do. The reader entries are few and far between. Most of the information is provided by the newspaper’s journalists with additional content supplied by the popular travel guide Frommer’s. Regardless, this is a slick online resource for travellers.

The Visa Company - This website helps you obtain a travel visa without having to physically go down to the embassy and queue up. The service is run by TLCS Global Visa Services, a company that handles over 6,000 visa applications a month.

The Zouk - Booking hotel accommodation online can involve hours of comparing rates and availability to find the perfect room. The Zouk saves you time by doing the hard work for you. Simply submit a request specifying your preferred dates, destination, price range and other requirements and the site will search for matching hotels. You can then review the results and accept the best offer to arrange your room. Accommodation types include apartments, pubs and private property and the service is completely FREE.

Thomas Cook

Times Online Travel website will help you tailoring pages to reflect your favourite holiday destinations and activities.

TravBuddy - If you like to travel, check this new site. It hosts a collection of travellers with profiles of their expeditions, maps of where they've been, blogs, and first-hand travel advice.

Travel Blog - The Free Travel Journal Website - Ever looked back at a period of your life and wished you'd kept a journal? Emails to friends back home have become a regular feature of travelling. Travel Blog takes this one stage further. Each time you add an entry your journal is categorised and archived and a notification is sent to all your family and friends. You can add photos without the fear of filling your friends hotmail accounts, your diaries won't be deleted accidentally.

Travel Chums

Travel Guru - One advantage of the internet over a traditional travel guide is the ability to include video. Travel Guru has plenty of videos to complement the more traditional country and holiday guides.

Travel Now

Travel Rants is a blog about travel-related issues. It is more sophisticated and informed than its name suggests. Travel Rants offers a wealth of personal experiences and opinions in the form of interesting, well-written articles that keep you engaged throughout.

Travel Select

TravelMarket - This new, UK version of a Scandinavian travel search engine claims to offer the best online deals for cheap flights. The search system couldn’t be simpler to use – just enter your departure and destination airports and departure and return dates and away you go – and yields impressively low, accurate results that include budget airlines such as Ryanair. You can also compare hotel prices and car-hire quotes.

Travelocity - The best thing about internet is that you can use it for price comparisons without having to wander around all the travel agents first. Travelocity is there to make things easier. It's an online travel agent that will automatically search out the best deals for you and return the results sorted by cost.

TravelRepublic - Use their search tool to find hotels, flights and holidays to match your specifications in an easy-to-browse format that lets you switch between detailed search results ( which include room options, location information  and customer reviews) and Quick View (which concentrates on price).

TripBod differs from other online travel networks in that it's peopled by locals rather than tourists. Rather than wading through complaints about hotel food when you're planning your holiday, this site lets you connect directly with people who live in your chosen destination. These ‘tripbods' will answer your questions you have, give you a personalised map and itinerary and chat to you via Skype. It's an interesting concept, superbly presented, and certainly worth considering if you want to travel off the beaten track.

TubeHotels helps visitors to London find and book hotels near tube stations. They search several hotel reservations web sites to find hotels, B&Bs (bed and breakfasts) and all accommodation near tube stations.

ViaMichelin - Travel-assistance specialist ViaMichelin has updated its online home but fear not: the chunky, ever-smiling Michelin Man still has a prominent place on every page. The new website is a reliably comprehensive guide from the folk who have been directing travellers for more than 100 years. The wealth of content means that you’ll probably need to spend a bit of time browsing to find the information you want, but the swish design is appropriately straightforward to navigate. As well as using the site for trustworthy maps and driving directions, you can search for hotels and restaurants, view tourist guides, get the latest motoring news and - using the new My ViaMichelin section - share tips with friends, family and other travel companions.

Vienna - This site offers a great introduction to the city. They have compiled some fast facts about Vienna such as a travel facts, travel links, tourist information and other useful info about Austria's capital.

Vienna Hotels - Book hotels in Vienna !!!

Virgin Holidays

Visit Europe

Voyages Jules Verne

Walkit.com - The revamped Walkit.com has added more routes to show you the greenest way to travel around cities – on foot. It now displays more than 75,000km of route information, demonstrating how easy it is to walk around towns and cities instead of driving or taking public transport. To use the point-to-point journey planner, enter the postcode or street name of your departure and destination. You’ll be given an estimate of the time it’ll take, depending on whether you walk fast, medium or slow, as well as the calories you’ll burn and how much carbon you’ll save.

Wayn.com is a virtual community website for travellers and adventurers who want to answer the question "where are you now?" Registration is free and easy, then you simply add the details of where you are planning a trip, to hook up with other members of the website who are either living in the place, or planning a trip there themselves at the same time as you. Use the link to Take the Tour on the opening page for a more detailed explanation.  In 2007 they added a new ‘make a difference’ section that lets members campaign on issues such as stopping the slaughter of dolphins in Japan. Other site enhancements include a fast-search facility, which sorts through hundreds of flight options with various itinerary combinations.

Yahoo launches UK Trip Planner - Yahoo has launched (Sep 2007) a service in the UK that allows travellers to plan their trips and read about other people's experiences. Trip Planner is part of Yahoo Travel, a service that attracts one million visitors a month, and will let you plot your planned route on an interactive map. In addition to this you can add notes and reviews about the destinations, as well as photographs to share with your friends and other Trip Planner users.

Zugu is the flight-comparison service and is much smarter than its sister site, Cheapflights.co.uk. Whereas Cheapflights.co.uk presents you with a list of deals, Zugu shows you the best fares for specific dates and lets you filter the results to find the most suitable flight. You can use sliders to specify your preferred take-off and landing times, exclude certain airlines from your search and easily share deals via email.

CUBA – AN UNIQUE CARIBBEAN EXPERIENCE - You may want to check out Cuba? I can tell you it's worth it. I had fabulous time whenever I've visited Cuba during my sailing years as Radio Officer on merchant vessels. Excellent destination !!!

TV & RADIO FAMILY SITES