tomhoward's VirtualTourist Home Page

VT is about a short cut to the soon-to-be-discovered and a guide to the hidden gems of travelling. It's about saving time and money, and getting the best out of your short time away from home.

Used to be one of the best travel resource sites you could find... stick to the forums now, most of the tip pages are unfortunately a waste of time.

I've concentrated on restaurants, bars and nightclubs, as the obvious tourist attractions can easily be sourced elesewhere.

For the ultimate combo in travel resources, combine VT with Frommers and Fodors. Once you've found a suitable hotel / restaurant, run it past TripAdvisor for some user reviews / ratings to be sure. Certainly for hotels in the UK / USA, if you type the name of the hotel into any search engine, their TripAdvisor page will be in the top 10 results back. Ignore recent comments in the likes of The Sunday Times about the credibility of these sites - you can spot fake reviews a mile off. Anyway, it's actually impossible to bump a property up the list for any length of time without the real guests leaving scathingly truthful reviews.

Oh, and remember the public as a whole can't be trusted when it comes to giving ratings. Someone who stays at a one star backpacking hostel will be pleased that the shared toilet had some paper left (leaving 5 out of 5), whereas someone who stays at the worlds finest 5 star resorts will quickly slate a hotel if the bed sheets aren't folded correctly (giving 2 out of 5). Attitudes vary across nationalities as well, with Americans being particularly critical for any service they perceive to be below the high standards they are used to.

For more specific advice on a variety of cities and topics, the Guardian Travel pages make excellent reading.

Discount Airfares has a pretty comprehensive list of European carriers, whilst Low Cost Airlines covers both Europe and beyond. If you've got an option of choosing a seat, use Seat Guru to bag a decent one.

For flights to and from the UK, SkyScanner and moneysavingexpert.com's FlightChecker come in handy.

For house music fans, fill your holiday I-pod with free MP3 mixes from Soulful Selecions, SupaSoul, Baked Soul & my current favourites DJ Manureva, & Routes in Rhythm.