Comments on: Hottest 100 Australian Travel Websites

By: Kay

Kay — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:26:59 +0000

I like HotelClub for their clean and simple design and especially their search result page layout.

By: Karyl Zawartowski

Karyl Zawartowski — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:11:38 +0000

I've been with the TakeAbreak website for three years now and am very happy with the way they present my cottage in Broken Hill to clients, are always there with support when needed, and when we wander off to somewhere else for a weekend, I can always find what I need as their site is easy to use. Big tick for them!!

By: Martin Kelly

Martin Kelly — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:56:05 +0000

Fair point. I'll pass this onto Hitwise. Note that the Hottest 100 is only a starting point.

By: Nathan Barrie

Nathan Barrie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:19:50 +0000

Our travel gear ecommerce website (traveluniverse.com.au) is unique in the Aust market – currently over 1750 travel products in stock, and it has been designed to work with industry partners to power their own online travel shops.

By: Sarah Whyte

Sarah Whyte — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:37:24 +0000

I'm interested to understand how sites such as Queensland Transport (which is the QLD Goverment website for licensing & registration) could be categorised under Travel? There's a few other examples in the list as well. If this is geniunely a search for the hottest 100 travel websites, perhaps the categorisation might need to reassessed to ensure that what is listed is really Travel related? Just a thought.

By: Martin Kelly

Martin Kelly — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:20:32 +0000

Thanks for your suggestion but I'm covered on the judging front, using a points system and three experienced, autonomous judges.

By: Clifford Reichlin

Clifford Reichlin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:41:48 +0000

I'd appreciate for my site, frequentflyer.com.au to be considered. Our Forum is, as far as I know, Australia's largest online travel community with a friendly and helpful member base.

There are close to 200,000 posts on topics tanging from how best to use frequent flyer programs to general travel tips and trip reports.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:06:37 +0000

Great new Qanatas web site easy to use and has all the information required. Good work QF.

By: Robert Austin

Robert Austin — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:55:55 +0000

As this is sponsered by Hitwise, no doubt some boring corporate site will win. If the criteria is traffic volume, that would be a cop out.

As a runner up I would nominate the Stella Resorts website which was redesigned by Isn't Media a year or so ago. I think it's really nice and usable. A great job for a medium sized QLD agency.

But the winner is clearly Hotels Combined. The technology and usability of this site is amazing. They also have an innovative affiliate platform and are no doubt powering some big brands from a stealth position. I recently used used the site "as a user" to book hotels on my recent holiday to Europe and it was da bomb.

Another small QLD agency doing some beautiful independent hotel websites is Pebble Design. They have a huge portfolio of Australian hotel sites. They recently launched the new Sofitel sites which look GREAT. They also did the Lake Crackenback and Westin websites.
All 3 are worth a look, just for the precision and clarity of the front end design.
They lack slightly in the technology / programming department however which limits their project scope.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:53:54 +0000

Flight Centre's site is hardly useful to travelers. It's just an inquiry machine…their deals have little to no information about them in an effort to get a very weak inquiry and some contact details.

We run a niche round the world online agency, roundabouttravel.com.au. Tough to get in a list that's purely judged on hits though. Would love to see a panel judged competition with various categories.