Hurricane season is for bargain-hunters

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Hurricane season will not keep travelers from their destinations! A recent survey by TripAdvisor®, which mined the opinions of more than 1,000 U.S. travelers, reports that 43 percent plan to hit a hurricane-prone destination this summer or fall – peak hurricane season. This is up from 36 percent last year. Sixty-five percent of the survey’s respondents are doing this to take advantage of a “significant savings.”

Blame the financial crisis.

An already dismal market for travel companies is likely to be exacerbated by storm risk in areas traditionally visited by hurricanes. To 25 percent of the survey respondents, this is why they’re going. Another 25 percent they could be convinced to enter hurricane neighborhood for discounts of greater than 50 percent on travel and accommodations.

Many of these survey-takers speak from experience. Thirty-two percent of them have been through hurricanes while on vacation … and it would take a lot to get them to leave. Eleven percent would bail when a Category 1 storm hits, and another 18 percent would move for a Category 2. The tipping point is Category 3, which would prompt 26 percent to leave, with a Category 4 storm shedding another 10 percent. Three percent of respondents would leave for a Category 5 storm, and only 2 percent would stick around regardless of hurricane potency. A whopping 29 percent answered, “I don’t know.”

Thirty percent of respondents simply avoid certain destinations because of hurricane risk, with the Caribbean the destination most avoided during storm season. Fifty-five percent would only cancel their plans if a storm was imminent, while 19 percent would cancel on possibility alone. Some hedge their bets – 30 percent said they are likely to buy trip insurance to protect their hard-earned cash from hurricane-related cancelations.

“Despite some reluctance to visit hurricane-susceptible destinations during storm season, a large number of travelers are willing to roll the dice if the price is right,” said Michele Perry, vice president of global communications for TripAdvisor.

Travel, alcohol consumption up, according to TripAdvisor

by Tom Johansmeyer on

We’ve seen travel predictions all over, such as Memorial Day travel will be up with the summer down. Everyone’s weighing in. The latest from TripAdvisor is that little has changed in a year. Actually, this isn’t TripAdvisor‘s opinion so much as that of more than 1,800 of its readers in the United States. More than a quarter of those taking vacations plan to make them last from a week to 10 days, with 21 percent upping the ante to 11 days to two weeks. Nearly 20 percent are going for up to three weeks.

Just over half of TripAdvisor’s respondents (56 percent) are taking the same amount of vacation they did last year, while 7 percent will spend more time on recreation than they did last summer.

At least these 1,800 respondents are still interested in having a good time. Thirty-six percent of them are more likely to down a bit more booze on the road … and 28 percent exercise less, with 25 percent eating more junk food. Ice cream is the favorite food (44 percent), and margaritas are the favorite drink (44 percent).

This is only one way that we change our behavior while traveling. Respondents also connect to the internet less (63 percent), watch less television (56 percent) and return fewer calls and e-mails (52 percent).

The top destination this summer is the beach, with 58 percent of respondents ready to get some sand in their toes. Hogging beach chairs will piss them off, though. Thirty-two percent see this behavior while they travel often – nine percent always.

Still have doubts? Not Michele Perry, senior vice president of global communications for TripAdvisor: “Recession be damned, Americans are preparing to pack up the beach bags and boogie boards en masse this summer.”

UpTake takes the pain out of finding the best travel reviews

by Scott Carmichael on

The travel world is “blessed” with quite a few review sites. In recent years, millions of reviews have been added to sites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, Fodors and more.

Of course, this means that it can be hard to find the best place for an honest review, or a site with enough reviews to help you make the right choice.

Enter UpTake – this service takes reviews from all those sources, and displays them on their own easy to use site.

They cover it all – hotels, restaurants, activities and even shops, spas and beaches. In total, UpTake claims to provide access to over 20 Million reviews.

The site itself is a breeze to use, and since everyone has a different preference for how they search, you can access reviews and recommendations in several ways. The easiest is of course to just enter your keywords. Thankfully, the site lets you find stuff with plain English queries. You can also browse by state, activity and even by theme (romantic, budget friendly, girls getaway, pet friendly, family friendly and “just get away”).

Search results are presented in a very easy to use format. The information shows you a brief summary of recent reviews, any available ratings, a map of the location, the most recent price of the location and even a list of other things to do in the area.

Once you get a list of places based on your search, you can narrow the results down by changing the price, type of amenities and theme. The results update “live” based on these requirements, making it really easy to pinpoint exactly what you are looking for.

For example, check out their page for the Westin Michigan Avenue in Chicago. As you can see, you get a great amount of information, with everything from the number of rooms to the year the hotel was built, as well as links to most review sites.

Hotels can be booked directly on the site, and UpTake even takes the hassle out of finding the cheapest rate by providing prices from multiple booking sites.

The “themes” section on UpTake is equally impressive – once again, you can search by keyword (“Pet friendly things in Seattle“) or by clicking on the themes buttons on the main page.

What I really like about the themed search results is that they gather information from appropriate sites. For example; pet friendly destinations uses reviews from DogFriendly.com.

Finally, the UpTake Vacations section allows you to do one-stop-shopping for planning your vacation. You’ll find hotel recommendations, but also links to attractions and other activities. Of course, all these destinations link to the specific UpTake review page.

All in all I’m quite impressed with the site – it offers a massive amount of information, but the tools make it really easy to find things, and unlike some other review sites, you only really get the information you need, without making the results overly complicated or hard to read.

The site is technically still in “Beta”, but I did not come across anything that did not work correctly. That said, there are one or two things I would have liked to see added – with so much information, it is hard to keep track of the things you looked at. Unfortunately, UpTake does not provide a way to easily save your results. In an ideal world, you’d be able to add search results to a “virtual suitcase”, making it easier to plan your trip and do some true comparison shopping.

Stinky London, Rude Paris, Romantic Venice

by Tom Johansmeyer on

If you need a sense of authority to trust a publication, you can’t do better than one from Australia. So, when the Sydney Morning Herald says that Brussels is boring, you have to believe it. Likewise, Paris is overrated, and the food sucks in London (duh).

Well, if you think the folks down under have credibility problems, fear not. It was reporting on a TripAdvisor poll of nearly 2,400 travelers, so it’s really TripAdvisor users who had an epiphany on the quality of London‘s cuisine.

Bad news for London: it also has the worst-dressed locals and is the most expensive. Oh, and it’s the dirtiest.

Sorry, guys.

Meanwhile, we needed a poll to tell us that Paris was the least friendly (though I’ve never had a problem there) and the second most expensive. Yet, Paris is top for grub and fashion, and London leads in nightlife, public parks and free attractions.

Need a romantic getaway in Europe? Venice still wins.

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Is swine flu changing your travel plans?

by Tom Johansmeyer on

TripAdvisor asked its visitors a simple question: are you changing your travel plans because of the swine flu scare? Plenty of people had answers: 2,857 people, to be exact. The vast majority (61 percent) won’t be deterred by the risk of swine flu, though there’s no indication of how many of these respondents are headed to high-risk areas. Twenty-four percent are making adjustments to upcoming excursions, and 15 percent didn’t have any travel plans to change.

How about you? Are you changing your travel plans? Or, are you ready to push forward?

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