Oct

Booking Adventure Sports Holidays: How the web can work for you

Mark Pawlak Category

Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts, ash Tags

adventure sports holiday, Adventure Travel, Adventure Travel Blogs, country information, Travel, travel advice, Travel News

Information is everywhere. Would-be adventure sports travellers can pick up everything they ever needed to know about a trip before they’ve even left their front room. Or can they?

The internet has long been a force for good. The availability to access information, from all sources, of all opinions is something we now take for granted – as is the objectivity of much of the information we actually receive.

Search results have long been dominated by Wikipedia and the leading news providers, so it’s difficult searching for anything today – while the web has widened it has also narrowed.

So, is there one place you can find that definitive country guide? The simple answer is, No – and we write them!

The best advice for travellers is to search wide and deep. By this, we mean look past the top ranking Google returns; search for blogs as well as news, and especially seek out local news sources.

We suggest you first decide what it is you are looking for, before charging headlong into a searching frenzy. Collect sources as you go and keep looking – this way you’ll not be suckered into just using one source.

Look at tourist board websites – while unlikely to be critical of their own countries, they do hold some of the most detailed information, often written by an experienced editor or expert.

Look at blogs: some are good, many are bad and a few are real ugly! With our blog, we link to individual country guides; so if you are interested in learning more about a country, just take a look.

We also know the best people in the adventure sports industry, so we’ve links to the greatest adventures.

Generally, we think it’s best to review as many sites as possible. Just take care with some of the local news providers, as a quick parallel search can draw up some ugly political allegiances.

Perhaps start with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO); the BBC is a fantastic educational resource and we would always recommend them as one, but never the only information portal.

Other stars, in our eyes are 501 Places, BootsnAll Travel, and Nat Geo’s Explorer Blog.

Also, pick through the daily papers and look for travel features, explore travel blogs for first-person reports and always, always look further into your search results.

Booking an adventure sports holiday this way can help avoid the dreaded discovery that the ‘exciting renovations’ and ‘popular beach’ are in fact building site detritus and a train crash of back-to-back sun loungers.

If you’ve recently found a new source of travel information, we want to hear about it!

So leave us a comment, and if you are after adventure sport guides for each country, we’ve got that covered.

About the author

Mark Pawlak wrote 232 articles on this blog.

Editor at Adventure Sports Holidays, Mark's love affair with travel and the challenges of adventure sports continues... "You could save all year for a two-week, all-inclusive, doss by the pool, booze and buffet binge. Or, with a little planning and some good equipment, get off your arse and plan an adventure!"

Ian K October 11, 2010 at 2:37 pm
I’ll definitely be checking out some travel blogs before I go away again. Guides like Lonely Planet are great for finding some hotspots – but it means that everyone knows about them! Can hope to find some less well-known places to visit I think if you do a bit of research…
Mark Pawlak October 11, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Always speak to people who have been there, just be aware, that once what was there, may now be gone!
Francesca October 12, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I absolutely agree with Ian…travel guides aren`t enough to get to know a country in a “real” way, or to decide which is the best itinerary to do, the best place to sleep, the best restaurant to eat or whatever more.
Over the years I`ve been trying to look at blogs before travelling, and this has always been very useful (both pre-trip and on-trip). My favourite one is “Turisti per Caso” (unfortunately there`s only an Italian version): here you can find travel books (diary) written by people who have already done a tour. They tell the readers about their experience, giving advices and suggestions!