Kelly was determined to find the nicest little cheap place to stay that she could find on her trip to the South Island of New Zealand. She read some online travel reviews for New Zealand and found this cool wee place that looked perfect. Cheap as chips, and pretty too. She thought she’d done well, and used the same site to book nearly all her free nights away from the tour she’d also found online.

When she arrived at the motel late at night, her heart sank. There was a really good reason it was cheap. It might have been the middle of winter, but there was no heating, the beds were barely covered with a sheet and the thin walls rattled every time the neighbours so much as whispered (let alone the wind that tore up the valley at 2am that morning).

Kelly later discovered the review had been written by the owner of the motel, the pictures were really out of date, and there were many amazing (but still cheap) places nearby she could have stayed in instead.

It can feel a little daunting to know if the information you are reading is a true travel review, or merely an advertorial paid for with free accommodation or from a professional paid writer. Finding out the true story of any place, tour or event is best done when the information is coming from people just like you – travellers wanting the best experiences New Zealand has to offer.

Online travel reviews are the best ways to find out all the secret gems, and avoid the scary places like Kelly’s disaster. You can often find them by trawling through blogs, and people’s online travel diaries but doing this is completely hit and miss and can take hours. Finding a site that provides you with a mix of comments and reviews from hundreds of travellers who have placed online travel reviews after their New Zealand travels is the most ideal way of finding the secret spots (like the awesome cafe in Kingsland, Auckland or the scary Coromandel caves you can discover for free, or the gold digging brothers in Hokitika who’ll make you scones and tell you ghost stories with a cup of billy tea.)

So how do you find New Zealand online travel reviews you can trust? Here are some simple tips when looking for online recommendations:

1) Look for a site that is full of personal experiences
While one person suggesting a place is awesome, fifty people suggesting the same thing, with a few frank comments about any issues or problems is far better. Kelly certainly wished she could have warned other travellers about her motel disaster.

2) Look for one that lets real people comment
Some sites are really just travel agency sites, with lots of comments from people who have been given free trips to write about. This means the bias can be slanted a little more positively than may be due in a real response to the place

3) Look for one that caters for a wide range of people
Even if you are on a mega budget you might want the occasional night of luxury (ooh that hot shower feels great after a week tenting in the South Island.) If you’ve got a comfortable budget, the more luxury orientated sites might focus only on the high cost tours and places to stay, and so much of New Zealand’s gems can be found in places where the cost isn’t that high. Find the secret local places that other travellers have found by sharing a few quiets in the pub with the locals.

The best thing about a community driven online travel review site is you’ll get to comment on your New Zealand adventure as well. You’ll have Kelly and her mates telling you what they loved, and what they hated. And then after you’ve experienced what other people have suggested, you too have a chance to let other’s know what you thought.

Through talking with thousands of travellers while running their own adventure tourism business, company owners Cymen Crick and Nick Morrison discovered that there was a clear need for independent travel information for NZ, free of bias and written by the traveller, for the traveller.

When you have simply had enough of the standard work-a-day routine, you are ready to visit the online travel sites for a well-deserved break. Unfortunately, you may lack the insight and advanced understanding to obtain the best deal on your well-deserved vacation.

While the airlines and the travel websites can usually frustrate most people with their widely varying prices from one moment to the next, there are some reasons for this type of operation bound up in a corporate profit-motive mentality to these heavy website variations.

Firstly, as your father used to tell you, it is well-advised to plan ahead. In general, as is almost always the case, the earlier ahead you make your bookings, the better the price. Booking a trip 4 months ahead will almost always result in a much lower overall price than booking two weeks or less prior to the planned date of the trip.

Of course there are emergency situations and last minute business travel that allows for little advanced booking considerations. In those situations, it’s even more important to apply the tips in the remainder of this article.

Making travel plans for your trip on the big bird on a weekend or holiday is a common mistake. These are the days the majority of the population is off work and able to get away. Due to supply and demand economics; this is the most expensive time for a happy holiday. The day you depart is very important to your ability to realize huge savings. Many times it even pays-off to sacrifice a few of your vacation days to reap the benefits. If you can travel on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday, you will almost always get great discounts from the more preferred Monday, Friday or Sunday travel dates.

Did you know that simply the day of the week you purchase your tickets can have a dramatic affect on the price? Most experienced travelers, travel executives and travel agents alike will tell you that Tuesday and Wednesday are the most affordable days or the week to actually book your trip.

You will find the discounted deals start to hit the travel sites on Monday night when discounted airline seats it seems can be reduced up to as much as 15% to 33% in some cases. One of the big budget airlines will typically offer a super discounted fare on Monday night with the other competitor airlines normally following the trend on Tuesday morning. As you pick up your trusty laptop on a Thursday or Friday to arrange your bookings, you will notice the price increase significantly.

To see for yourself the variance of prices subjected to the day you actually book your travel, take a look at travel sites such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz on different days of the week. Make sure you compare apples to apples and not apples to oranges though. Use the same online discount travel service and the same airline as reference only go to the sites on different days of the week. For example, set one date a couple of months in the future as your travel date and compare that same date on the three services mentioned above for the same airline, but on different days of the week. Overall, you will probably see a twenty five to one-third decrease in the ticket price in the early days of the week.

The airline sites are very smart nowadays. Be aware that they also seem to track booking patterns. From minute to minute prices can change for a bargain seat. If the volume is high for a particular travel destination/ seat, the price can go up unexpectedly for a given seat a few minutes later. Sometimes it seems as though the searching and looking you are currently performing is influencing the price–and it very well may be. Technology nowadays is constantly monitoring and adjusting to market demands. It’s the way of the 21 century. If you find a deal that seems much better than expected, and your scrooge mentality kicks-in causing you to continue looking for an even better deal on another travel site or airlines, you may be surprised that you lost your too-good-to-be-true deal when you come back to retrieve it again.

A most overlooked method of obtaining additional discounts on travel and airline tickets is a visit to the coupon and promotional code websites prior to booking. These sites will regularly feature discounts in the form of coupon codes and clickable links that will save you additional money on general and specific travel destinations and airlines. Try doing a few Google searches for phrases like: “Miami airline ticket coupon” or “Delta air travel promotions.” Doing so will return a list of coupon websites offering deals and coupon codes for these specific destinations or airlines. Get creative with your searches and try a multitude of different phrases; you will be surprised at the number of websites offering discounts you will find that will help you save additional money on your travel.

When arranging your next holiday of course you can see what your local travel agent has to offer. But by using an online travel agency you will be amazed at the variety of holidays that they can offer you but also they can provide some really great deals. So getting more for your money is going to prove a great deal easier.

But there are other benefits to be gained from using an online travel agent instead of those that are located close to your home. Below we take a look at just what some of these benefits are.

Benefit 1 – You can contact these companies at anytime that you wish. Whereas when it comes to your local agents then of course you will need to visit them when they are open. So if you need to arrange travel at the last minute or late at night then this you will be able to do very easily through an online company.

Benefit 2 – By opting to use an online travel agency then you can quickly and easily compare the deals that various ones are offering. So ensuring that you then get the best deal for the money that you can afford to spend on your holiday. Whereas with a conventional travel agent you will find that they only normally work with one or two holiday companies so of course they are limited to offering their deals to you only.

Benefit 3 – Through using an online travel agency you have the opportunity to select who you work with. So the chances of you being able to create travel plans that meet your particular requirements is going to prove a great deal easier. As a result this will help to ensure that the holiday you take will be the most enjoyable ever.

Online travel service ratings are being regarded as the backbone of travel and tourism service providers. The web travel and tourism industry has evolved quite dramatically in the past one decade. Today, an increasing number of people turn to search engines to plan their holidays and vacations, offering potential opportunities for online travel service providers to expand their business.

However, your potential customers are more informed today and your competitors are even hungrier. In the face of intense competition in a rapidly evolving travel business, the web travel service ratings play a key role to help sustain your travel and tourism business.

Therefore, it is imperative for the online tourism service providers to focus on the following points in order to boost their travel service ratings.

Offer Attractive Vacation Packages:

Your prospective customers are web-savvy and search the Internet for the best vacation packages before they book for their holiday online. They may not be looking for the exact vacation package you offer. Therefore, allow the customers to assemble their own trip by empowering them with customization. This will help improve the online travel service ratings for your business.

Encourage After-trip Feedback:

When your customers are back from their trip, encourage them to share their travel experience with you by offering valuable feedback. This not only allows your customers to feel privileged, but also offers you an opportunity to take your service quality further and build a bonding with the customers. This may go a long way to increase the online travel service ratings for your company.

Introduce Coupons for Loyal Customers:

Treating your loyal customers with care is crucial to building your online travel business further up. Make sure you offer special discount coupons to your repeat customers. This offers them a very good feeling about why they should use your website again and again.

Build Long-term Relationship:

Online travel service providers should foster a long-term relationship with their customers in order to ensure repeat business. You should stay connected to your customers round the year by introducing them new tour offers and special tourism packages based on their past vacation priorities. For instance, you can send news letters to your customers about any attractive tour discounts they may take advantage of. Again, this may add to the online travel service ratings for your business.

Allow Customers to Write Reviews:

In order to boost online travel service ratings, you should encourage satisfied customers to write reviews about your services. You can be sure that these reviews will further influence other people to sign up for your services. User reviews add credibility to your services since it is a direct reflection of the satisfaction of clients. Not only can they make your ratings go up, but they also invite other clients.

Run A Travel Blog:

When it comes to improving your online travel service ratings, nothing works like running a travel blog. It is essentially a fun way to interact with your potential customers and show them the beautiful side of signing up with your tour services.

You can also allow your satisfied customers to contribute to your blogs occasionally as guests. This not only creates a sense of value among your customers but also adds to the credibility of your travel business among many other potential customers.

Focus on Social Integration:

Social networks are the epicenter of product promotion for online service providers, especially in the travel and tourism industry. Developing a powerful social presence via Facebook fan page, Twitter and LinkedIn is almost inevitable to promote your travel business online. When you allow your satisfied customers to write a review or share their tour pictures with you on your Facebook fan page, it works wonders for other potential customers.

A dedicated approach to maintaining your social presence can go a long way in ensuring excellent customer satisfactions and online travel service ratings.