Sicily on the Online Travel Journals: the Best and the Worst
Travel journals are fun and they have become even more fun with web 2.0. Everybody, even without HTML knowledge, can post itineraries, photos, videos, podcasts and maps online and share them with the entire world or only with family and friends.
The web 2.0 travel journals are consumers’ generated content: they are passionate, realistic, fresh and, most of the times, give insights that you would not get from any tourist authority. We tend to believe a perfect nobody that might have some misspells in his/her writing and doubt information that, instead, appears biased.
Here is a list of what travel journals say about Sicily at a glance (and my ratings):
TripAdvisor.com
Great for its hotels’ reviews, I found it weak on the general description of Sicily. The introduction about Sicily is full of misspellings, for instance. Anybody can change the introduction through a wiki style interface after registering as a member. I use TripAdvisor whenever I am visiting a place I do not know.
Rating: 7
IgoUgo.com
I find IgoUgo more traveler-centered than TripAdvisor. So, travel journals sound more complete. Sicily is well covered on its pages. IgoUgo does not have the impressive hotels’ reviews of TripAdvisor.com, but its members are serious travelers.
Rating: 7
Yahoo Travel
The functionalities are good, but you need to have a yahoo account. The site is also too much focused on selling travel. You can save your trip and share or keep it private. I was thrilled with the map: you are able to highlight all the places of interest of a destination without any problem. There is a great amount of travel journals about Sicily posted, but not always easy to search.
Rating: 6
VirtualTourist.com
Members seem to be really committed. I like that it makes easy to leave comments for other users. Downside: no hotel reviews.
Rating: 5
VCarious.com
A site born from the Web 2.0 revolution, it has more potential than the other two sites technologically speaking. Unfortunately, it does not have much market share. So, content does not match the great technological potential. I like the way it is organized and the great functionality. It does not have much content about Sicily.
Rating: 4.5
RealTravel.com
Good site with lots of content and straightforward architecture, but Sicily is not really featured in a complete way.
Rating: 4
Gusto.com
I enjoy the look and feel of the site, but content is poor for foreign travel. Also, the name of the site means “taste” in Italian… It would make sense to me if it were a web site with food travel reviews.
Rating: 3
Technorati Tags [ sicily | sicily’s travel journals | tripadvisor | igougo | virtual tourist | vcarious | yahoo travel | gusto.com | real travel ]
