Your virtually there (virtualtourist.com)

Member Name: pookie_rabbit

Product:	virtualtourist.com
Date:	30/10/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good information and community

Disadvantages: Couple of sections not much use

When it comes to going on holiday I have to admit to being a compulsive organiser and scheduler. I wish I was one of those people who could get off a plane and just go with the flow. I like to have every single guide book available and even this isn't enough. I need to have checked every possible web site for some local information and maybe a few attractions off the beaten track. With this I have an "itinerary" which in theory allows us to make the most of our trip away. I should say at this point I no doubt sound like the most annoying person to travel with. To be fair the reality is always different mostly due to late morning (even afternoon) starts from drunken late nights. At this point all the best laid plans descend into chaos. And in my defence we have unearthed some great places that we would not otherwise have found.
One of the web sites I have used for many years for unearthing these gems is Virtual Tourist - or "VT" as its known and how I will relate to it during this review.

The site was started 10 years ago and its premise has always been "Real travellers - Real info". Perhaps that should be the other way round really - real info from real travellers. And not always travellers. Just somebody who happens to live in the town they want to share information about. It now has a million users from more than 200 countries. Originally run from a Santa Monica apartment by its founders since 2008 it has been owned by TripAdvisor a pretty well known travel review and comparison site. VT very much depends on user contribution. Users of the likes of dooyou and ciao should feel at home here although I should point out you don't get any sort of awards (apart from perhaps satisfaction of becoming a top reviewer) for writing the travel tips. Anyway onto the site itself.

When opening up VT the home page and your "Notice Console" will show. The first page allows you to jump to the VT "Top Spots" - London, Paris, New York etc. Also shown are a VT "Featured Member", Community news and some forum questions and replies. Your "Notice Console" opens in a separate windows with shortcuts to the following -

Unread E-Mail
Forum Replies
Comments for you
Ratings for you
Friends Online
New friendship notices
Friends birthdays

What most people are visiting VT for is information on a particular place or location. You can do this via a search from the homepage. You then (if it exists) hit the travel page for that place. The place can be a city, area, country or continent. One advantage that VT has over guide books is that smaller places may have some contribution. Not many tourists may have visited but someone who actually lives there may have written some notes on the place. Some locations are just weak on information and of course information can be outdated. However you can see the date written on any particular travel tip.

Once you arrive at the page for a city you are told how many VT users live there and also if any VT meetings are scheduled (I will cover this a bit later). Each location is then broken down into the following -

Overview
Thing to do
Transportation
Shopping
Tourist traps
Local customs
Sports travel
Hotels and accommodation
Nightlife
Restaurants
Off the beaten path
Warnings or dangers
Packing lists
General tips

Under "Things to do" for instance in, lets say Paris, the Eiffel Tour and the Lovure are listed. Selecting either one of these gives each persons "opinion" or tip. You can then rate the tip "Not Helpful" to "Very Helpful" on a scale of 1 to 5. The higher the tip is marked the higher it appears in the list of tips. Each of these tips may or may not also contain photos.
My favourites always tend to be "Nightlife" and "Off the beaten path". I never think travel writers have enough time to really get to grips with nightlife and of course it changes so quickly. Whereas the "Things to do" has stuff you would normally find in a standard guidebook the "Off the beaten path" often has some good stuff that only local people would know or write about.

As well as just showing individual tips a user can also have a full page dedicated to a location. The top 5 pages created by users for each location are listed on the location home page. The quality of these can range from a couple of items of rubbish to guidebook quality. Creating your own pages is simple as I will explain shortly.

One useful tool is creating your own trip planner based on these tips. When reading a tip you can add useful tips to a collection with "Add to your trip planner". You can have multiple plans for different trips the only limitation being a total of 250 prices of content contained in all of your planners. You can view your planner or print it off which is in the handy PDF format.

Also listed on the location home page is a forum to ask questions about that place. Listed are the last few questions and also unanswered questions. If you post a forum question in a specific location it also works its way up to the root of VT. For example asking a question in the Paris forum will automatically make its way to the Ile-De-France (area), France, Europe and All forums.
The forums are lively and most questions seem to get answered by somebody.

As I said above you can create your own pages. You can create a homepage describing yourself and showing your travel map and also pages for individual locations. Your travel map can include places you have been, lived and want to visit. You can also export it to post on another web site if needed.
To create your page you have an intro section and then can add multiple tips based on the predefined subjects above (Tourist traps, General tips etc.). To this you can add text, pictures and video.

Another important aspect of VT is its community. You can meet members and one section is dedicated to member meetings all over the world. As with the forum this is lively and seems very popular. As of writing meetings included beer in Berlin and a trip around the Christmas markets in Manchester for example. According to the site information 25 people have been married after meeting on VT! You can search on members by where they live and what their travel interests are for example also. On finding someone from a certain city you want to add them as a friend or e-mail them to ask a specific question.

Aside from all of the above a couple of other sections are worth a mention but to be honest aren't much use. The book travel section allows you to compare prices for things such as a flight. The system uses onetime.com so the results you get back are American and in US$. Another section which would be useful in theory is for "Travel Deals" where users post information on advertisements and deals they have seen. Travel deals posted included a £1 a night hotel deal in London. However it doesn't seem to get much use which is a shame.

Overall VT is a lot of fun just for just searching for information. If you are the sort who maybe travels individually or are away on business I would imagine the VT meetings are a lot of fun. And if you ever wanted to write your own travel books or maybe just share your own little town this is your chance.

Summary: If you like travel you will like this site