LIST: SPECIALIST ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCIES
These are specialist online travel agencies covering specific market areas such as flight-only, ski holidays, cruises, golf breaks, etc. | |||||
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| Aferry.to | AFT is an online ferry booking system for European ferries services, not just ex-UK but in the Adriatic, Aegean, Baltic, Mediterranean,etc. There are also special offers and 'Ferry + Hotel' packages. It has an extremely simple to use graphical 'point & click' selection process. | ||||
| Alternative Airlines |  Really useful specialist agency (launched in April 07) selling flights on less well-known international and regional airlines. So if, for example, you need to buy a ticket from Ekaterinburg to Osaka, you can buy it online with Vladivostock Air. Its parent is the mainstream air ticketing agency Flight Directors who also create dedicated UK ticketing websites for overseas airlines. Now Alternative Airlines sells seats for over 180 airlines, many of which you will never have heard of! (eg. Merpati Nusantara Airlines, Donbassaero, or Air Corridor)
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| Boat Bookings.com | Yacht chartering specialist with a huge selection of over 5000 boats - from day power boats to sailing yachts to super yachts - available in the UK, French Riviera, Ibiza, Palma, BVI, Caribbean, USA, & Thailand. | ||||
| Coachtrips.com | Specialist agency selling coach tours worldwide, online. | ||||
| Cruise Classified | Specialist cruise-only agency. Cruise Classified has been selling cruises offline since 1985. | ||||
| CruiseDirect.co.uk | Specialist cruise-only site. Part of the Barrhead Travel group. | ||||
| Cruise Line, The | Cruise-only direct-sell agency launched 1993. They are also the publishers of World of Cruising magazine. | ||||
| CruisesDirect2u.com | Specialist cruise-only site launched Feb 04 by Thomas Cook. | ||||
| Direct Ferries | Ferry specialist covering over 36 routes to and from the UK. Not the most intuitive site. It can be difficult to work out which company operates which route. | ||||
| easyJet4ski.com | Ski holidays for easyJet customers operated by UpToYou.com who offer transfers, chalet & hotel ski holidays in France (27 resorts), Italy (3 resorts) & Switzerland (13 resorts). | ||||
| Ferrybooker.com | Online ferry and cross-Channel booking service and the only resource offering reservations with all operators offering UK departures. The site features complete searchable timetables, city break & holiday offers, and add-ons including accommodation, insurance, car hire and currency. Visitors also get weather reports, a Calais shopping directory and a guide to driving in France. Another site in the OTC stable. | ||||
| FlightsDirect.com | Flight only website belonging to the Glasgow-based Barrhead Travel group. | ||||
| Flightseeing.co.uk | Agency for aerial sightseeing tours in the USA, Canada and Australia. | ||||
| Freedom Flights | Online agency for Excel Airways charter flights. | ||||
| Freedom Rail | Online European rail ticketing | ||||
| Holidayextras | Online booking for a range of UK airport based holiday extras like airport hotels, car parks, lounges and transfers, plus foreign exchange and travel insurance. For example you can check availability and book space at airport car parks. It is operated by ABC Holiday Extras who, since 1983, have been wholesalers dealing in UK airport hotels and car parks for the retail travel trade. ABC Holiday Extras have recently dropped the 'ABC' bit of their name, but they are still a wholly independent website- something of a rarity. | ||||
| Holiday Travel Essentials | Launched in Aug 02 to sell extras such as include attraction tickets, pre-departure hotels and parking, car hire, hotels and self catering accommodation prior to departure, and tours in holiday destinations world-wide. They've also branched into Florida villas. | ||||
| IfYouDive.com | ifyoudive is part of the Online Travel Corporation's (OTC) ifyoutravel group of niche portals. It offers a range of scuba diving holidays around the world, plus dive advice, and news, a database of dive destination information, a dive centre finder, and an equipment section reviewing all the latest gear. | ||||
| IfYouExplore.com | ifyouexplore is part of the Online Travel Corporation's (OTC) ifyoutravel group. It offers adventure, activity, & expedition holidays all over the world. The site also includes advice & news, trip planning resources, competitions, editorial, and a travel equipment shop. | ||||
| IfYouGolf.com | ifyougolf is owned by ifyoutravel.com, part of Online Travel Corporation (OTC). It offers holidays to over 30 of the world's best-known golf regions from the Algarve to South Africa. Featured options include UK weekend breaks, late deals and special offers, tournament and tuition weeks and group tours. The site also includes comprehensive details on stay-and-play golf courses at home and abroad as well as an equipment section reviewing all the latest gear. There are course reviews, tournament news and downloadable video golf lessons. |
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| ifyouski.com | ifyouski.com started life as complete-skier.com before becoming the founding site of the ifyoutravel.com family, aquired later by OTC. Like the others in the ifyoutravel family it's a brilliant site and sets the standard for niche sector travel sites. Not only does it sell ski packages, but it has advice on what ski boots to buy, what restaurants to go to, how to improve your technique, what the weather will be, who won the latest Mens Giant Slalom Gold Cup, etc, etc, etc. Everything you want to know or do. If you ski, go there. | ||||
| igluCities.com | Specialist city-break site covering Paris, Brussels & Bruge only. | ||||
| igluSki.com | The original site of iglu family; a specialist ski portal site selling ski holidays & accommodation with snow reports, resort reports, news & advice. | ||||
| igluTropical.com | Specialist long-haul holiday site selling family holidays, safaris, beach holidays, all-inclusive holidays, wedding & honeymoons, diving holidays & cruises, with booking taken through a call centre. | ||||
| Latelink.com | Specialist online site for late-availability UK boating holidays. Booking is done by phone. Badly needs a design make-over (who are we to talk!), but there's a fair amount of useful content on this site. The search facility for finding holiday/location/boat availability tends to come up with 'nothing found - suggest you phone us' too often. As a spin-off they offer holiday cottages too at Latelink Cottages, aka Holiday Cottages Online (see above). | ||||
| Loco | ** 15/12/06 HCCT (Holidays) Limited, trading as CT2 and Loco Flights, collapsed just before Christmas.Flight-only from Manchester, Glasgow-Prestwick, Newcastle, Bristol, Birmingham and Gatwick to Tenerife, Alicante, Arrecife, Malaga and Athens (for the 2004 Olympics). Loco are difficult to categorise because they promote themselves as if they are a no-frills airline, whereas they actually operate regular flights on aircaft which they charter. | ||||
| OnlineSkiers.com | Online ski website - part of the Online Travel Group (OTG) - offers ski packages in resorts throughout the Alps. How is it different to OTC's other ski site, ifyouski.com? Well, ifyouski is a ski portal that sells components like studio & apartments, ski hire etc. Online ski concentrates on selling ski packages from mainstream operators like Neilson, Crystal, Thomson, Airtours, & First Choice at late availability or bargain prices. | ||||
| Openjet.com | Flight-only site for low-cost airlines (unusual because low-cost airlines don't appear in standard global reservations systems, prefering instead to sell seats online themselves). Openjet offers seats on Mytravellite, easyJet, Volareweb, Basiq Air and bmiBaby. The site also allows you to book multi-leg journeys on a combination of different airlines (interlining). | ||||
| Pack Your Skis | Ski portal | ||||
| Pick & Cruise | Online cruise agency. Select a cruise online and book by phone. | ||||
| Planet Cruise | Cruise agency website selling 7,000 itineraries on 22 cruise lines, all bookable online. Planet cruise is a brand of Freedom Travel Group, a subsidiary of United Co-op Travel. | ||||
| Qjump | UK train ticketing, with quite a sophisticated travel management system for business accounts. Part of the National Express Group. | ||||
| Railbookers.com | UK & European rail ticketing (inc Eurostar & Orient Express) and short breaks with accommodation. | ||||
| Realworld Travel | This site specialises in adventure travel. It was launched in 1998 as the online identity of Realworld Travel, a walking & cycling adventure agency set up two years earlier by Robert Ferguson, a former Operations Manager at Exodus. Visitors can select a pre-planned Realworld adventure which has been packged using specialist tour operators from around the world, or use their directory of those operators to plan and book their own components. | ||||
| RocketSki | An online agency for skiers and snowboarders (launched: Sept 00). What makes it special is its 'pick and mix' facility allowing you to buy any or all of the elements of a ski holiday - hotel, chalet, flights, car hire, airport transfer, lift pass, equipment hire, insurance, tuition, etc. The site covers Austria, France and Italy and has been developed by ski and snowboard specialist Equity Total Travel, a well-established and respected independent ski operator. It is well put together and easy to use. You can ask it to suggest a resort that suits you or simply go straight to the resort you are interested in. The online booking system is an easy-to-follow 'shopping basket' system that you can browse around in before having to fill in forms and if you can't cope or can't be bothered, there's a telephone phone booking number. The Company is a fully bonded member of ABTA and holds its own ATOL licence. | ||||
| Round The World Flights.com | Is a part of the Global Village agency, specialising - as the name suggests - in round the world tickets. There's a really simple and clever graphical system for selecting your route from, and back to, the UK (it must have a minimum of four destinations en route) so that it can search for the best ticket pricing. There's also lots of other info aimed at long-term (gap year) travellers. | ||||
| Ski-Holidays.com | This one's been around since December 1999 and it just keeps growing. It is an award-winning site and claims to be the largest independent specialist ski & snowboard travel agent in the UK with a live ski holiday database of over 1 million holidays from major brands and smaller operators. It also has an availability database of 5,000+ chalets, apartments and hotels. Bookings are made by telephone. Ski-holidays.com is part of the LEI group of businesses that operate a number of other specialist ski holiday brands. These include Snow Line, Skiers Travel, Chalet Connections and Ski the Rockies all. The group chairman is John Neilson, the founder of Neilson Ski Holidays. |
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| Student Flights | Student Flights launched in the UK in July 03 and is owned by flight-only specialists, Flight Centre. SF offers exclusive airfares to students and backpackers, as well as a range of holiday packages and budget accommodation, bus, rail and ferry passes, student discount cards and discounted travel insurance. It has five branded stores in the UK, which are located in London (Euston Road), Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. There are also seven dual-branded Flight Centre / Student Flights stores in Earls Court, Goodge Street, Victoria in London, Kingston in Middlesex, Uxbridge, Manchester and Guildford. | ||||
| TheTrainLine | Online rail bookings. TrainLine now handles 27 million UK rail journey enquiries a year (Aug 03) and has just opened a new section of the site to handle information and bookings on European high speed trains such as Eurostar, TGV and Thalys. | ||||
| Trains Europe | Online ticketing agents for rail services around Europe (TGV, ICE, Thalys, etc). Also agents for a number of classic trains, eg Trans-Siberian Express, The Blue Train, Rovos Rail, The Ghan, The Rocky Mountaineer, The Al Andalus Express. | ||||
| Travelorganisation.com | Travelorganisation.com was launched in June 2001 as an online travel agency for conference/event organisers and their delegates. It is a sister company to TMO, the event and incentive travel management company. It offers delegates a one-stop shop for all travel services, including leisure add-ons and incidentals such as foreign exchange, insurance, theatre tickets and restaurant bookings. | ||||
| TravelRepublic | Online agency specialising in charter flights to holiday destinations. | ||||
| Traxaway | European rail travel specialist agency. Book Eurostar, TGV, ICE, Thalys, night trains, and hotel trains for business or leisure trips. They have a portfolio of good hotels right next to railway stations and organise car hire. They sell all the special tickets such as Inter-Rail, Eurail, & Eurodomino. | ||||
| Viator | Viator (it's the latin word for 'traveller' by the way), launched in 1995, sells ground-based tours, excursions and activities (over 5000 of them) in 75 countries, mostly through affiliates (other people's websites) such as Opodo, BA.com, Paris.com, visitLondon.com. You can book online for a range of tours covering everything from romantic excursions in exotic destinations to adventurous jaunts such as the 4WD Blue Mountains Explorer Trek in Australia. In addition to all the popular 'must-do' tours throughout the world like the Eiffel Tower or Seine dinner cruise in Paris, they also cover the more unusual Sex and the City Tour in New York, a daring Bridge Climb of Sydney Harbour or the Alcatraz Tour in San Francisco.
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| Waxed.com | Dedicated snow-boarders portal from the Online Travel Corporation (OTC). Used to be a specialist travel site called boardit.com, but they've now turned it into a full portal with editorial, forums, clothing, music, etc.. and travel. | ||||
| Webweekends | Launched on 1st June 00, this site specialises in weekend breaks in the UK and abroad. They define a weekend as a maximum of 4 nights - at least one of them a Saturday or a Sunday - anywhere on earth that you can reach in a weekend. It is a directory of 2,000 weekends offered by other tours companies. | ||||
| WorldSki | Online ski agency offering packages from major operators like Neilson, Ski Total, Ski World, Ingham, Crystal and Thomson. An Online Travel Group brand. | ||||
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| Research Tips: | * See also Online Accommodation-only Agencies |
| * See also General Online Agencies |
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