Website of the Week: www.travelspinner.com
By Fred Mawer
Out there are many dozens of excellent holiday companies, with invaluable, expert knowledge of the places they sell trips to. But how do you find them, and how do you go about homing in on the outfit best suited to fixing your particular holiday?
Travel agents are often not much use. Many will point you in the direction of companies to which they are affiliated or to those offering the juiciest commission. Moreover, some of the best tour operators are direct sell only.
A couple of experienced travel writers have come up with an interesting solution, in the form of a new website called Travelspinner. You answer a few questions about where you want to go and fill out an online form covering other requirements – who’s going, when you want to travel, how much you’re willing to spend etc.
Check in chill out: The website offers to get in touch with holiday companies who can put itineraries together for you based on your needs
Travelspinner currently works with over 200 specialist holiday companies, and it sends your completed form off to the three it assesses to be best suited to fixing your trip. The companies then email you back with proposed holidays and answers to any queries.
No company pays to be on Travelspinner, and the website doesn’t charge commission for making a recommendation – so everything is squeaky clean.
Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I put the system to the test – saying I was looking for a holiday to Morocco for my family over October half term, combining Marrakesh, the coast, the Atlas mountains and the Sahara.
Strengths
There’s no registration faff, and the form you fill in is idiot proof. It took me about three minutes to say what I was after – though Travelspinner stresses that the more detail you go in to, the more useful the responses are likely to be.
Travelspinner sussed I was a journalist, but I can still say with confidence that its system works, and the service is potentially incredibly useful and can save you oodles of time.
And the kids came too: Fred Mawer tested the site by arranging a family holiday to Morocco
Over the course of the following two days, I received emails from three companies specialising in family holidays in Morocco. Two – Bushbaby Travel and Stubborn Mule Travel – went into great detail about our possible trip, spelling out what was realistically do-able with children in the time available (not the Sahara apparently), recommending enticing places to stay, highlighting activities such as camel rides and lunch in a sheikh’s house, and giving an idea of how much it would all cost.
Abi from Bushbaby Travel even had boys the same age as ours, and had taken them to Morocco – so had I actually wanted to book, I would have thought I’d struck gold. And, as well as the tailored information, I could read reassuring and informative overviews of the companies written by Travelspinner.
Weaknesses
The website has only just launched, so there were some technical glitches. For example, the first email I received from Naturally Morocco contained their marketing blurb, rather than advice on my holiday. And the messages back from the companies were compressed into single, long and rather indigestible paragraphs.
Travelspinner isn’t in the business of trying to help with every kind of holiday. The companies it features are mostly geared towards specialised, and mid-market and upmarket, holidays, not cheap beach breaks.
‘We’re about getting you a better holiday not a cheaper one,’ says Travelspinner.
Ratings
Inspiring 2/5
Useful 5/5
Easy to use 5/5
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