holidays-uncovered.com

I absolutely hate questionnaires and personality profiles where you’re constantly asked to list your hobbies – I mean I’m not exactly the kind of girl that has any real passions in life or anything like that, I’m not mad about reading, nor do I follow any sports like a religion and I’m not blessed with culinary skills!

So I tend to end up putting the old usual euphemisms “socialising” meaning getting drunk with my friends and having ...
...going to extortionately priced stores and depressing myself by realising I can’t afford nor do I have any real reason to spend £200 on a top and “exercise” well this one isn’t really a lie, I walk from my bed to the bathroom at least twice a night and I’m always browsing up and down the aisles in Sainsburys! But one of my true, and honest, hobbies in life is complaining!

The smallest fault can instantly transform my mood, if something ... more

I absolutely hate questionnaires and personality profiles where you’re constantly asked to list your hobbies – I mean I’m not exactly the kind of girl that has any real passions in life or anything like that, I’m not mad about reading, nor do I follow any sports like a religion and I’m not blessed with culinary skills!

So I tend to end up putting the old usual euphemisms “socialising” meaning getting drunk with my friends and having to be carried home in a comatose state, “shopping” meaning going to extortionately priced stores and depressing myself by realising I can’t afford nor do I have any real reason to spend £200 on a top and “exercise” well this one isn’t really a lie, I walk from my bed to the bathroom at least twice a night and I’m always browsing up and down the aisles in Sainsburys! But one of my true, and honest, hobbies in life is complaining!

The smallest fault can instantly transform my mood, if something isn’t up to scratch then I’m the one to notice it and I’m always the one to moan about it without fail! This is why when I’m committing to something as big as a holiday I have to ensure that I’ve done everything I can to make sure it’s going to run smoothly and be as perfect as possible. And it also means that anyone I’m travelling with will be spared the constant ear ache from my moaning!

And so last year while searching for a holiday I came across this gem of a website called Holidays Uncovered and as such it meant I had two relatively complaint free holidays last summer!

** What is Holidays Uncovered? **

Holidays Uncovered is basically a website run and written by the public for the public with regard to different hotels and self catering resorts around the world. A large number of hotels in the world and especially within Europe can be found on this website along with a series of reviews written by people who have actually experienced this hotel for the public’s perusal – almost the bible guide to holidays really! The reviews are uniform in a certain sense as they include criteria that the writer has to rate and also then offer the opportunity for the author to write their own thoughts and comments quite freely to give an overall impression.

The site covers hotels falling within the following locations; Algarve, Barbados, Bulgaria, Corfu, Costa Blanca, Costa Brave, Costa de Almeria, Costa de la Luz, Costa del Sol, Costa Dorada, Crete, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Fuerteventura, Gambia, Goa, Gran Canaria, Halkidiki, Ibiza, Italy, Jamaica, Kefalonia, Kenya, Kos, Lanzarote, Lefkas, Lesbos, Madeira, Majorca, Maldives, Malta, Menorca, Mexico, Rhodes, Samos, Santorini, Skiathos, Tenerife, Thailand, Thassos, Tunisia, Turkey, USA Florida, USA New York, USA, Zakynthos and then Rest of the World.

** The Home Page **

Upon opening the website you will be greeted with a bright orange page, almost worthy of sun glasses (perhaps to try to get you in the mood for a holiday) with a list of tour operators that are reviewed on the site along the top of the page. In the centre of the page next to a little deck chair are the words “Holidays Uncovered” in large, bold, blue print and by clicking on this you will be taken to the index page of the site. All in all it’s an effective home page – it’s eye catching and the main link (to the index page) is clearly labelled and easy to follow, there’s also not a lot of information on this page which makes a change from the somewhat typical “cluttered” web pages that seem to be becoming more and more common.

** Searching for Your Location **

The index page features a drop down menu at the top of each of the locations covered by the site with also sub locations too, for example the Algarve has 13 different links depending on the resort e.g. Albufeira and also the first letter of the name of the accommodation. By merely clicking on your chosen location and resort you then click on a little “Go” button to the right of the drop down menu and you’ll be transported to the relevant page.

The second option for getting to your chosen hotel is by looking a little further down the page where all the locations and resorts are listed and one can merely click on the relevant one to be taken to the page.

Again this page is fairly uncluttered with the background maintaining the bright orange façade but being slightly calmed by the more mellow cream coloured sections where the text can be found. To the right of the lists of locations are some links (presumably sponsors of the site) to various different areas of interest, for example, airport parking, bargain holidays, etc. but these will be explored in more detail further down in this review (the suspense hey!).

** The Reviews **

So you’ve selected the appropriate location and resort name and found the relevant page, now what? This bit isn’t quite as well sign posted on the site, on each page there can be up to 1000 reviews of different hotels so it’s rather time consuming to go scrolling down the page. The best idea is one that can actually be found on the Internet Explorer tool bar itself, by going to “Edit” on the tool bar and then “Find” you can enter the hotel name and by clicking on “Find” you will be taken to the start of the list of reviews for that hotel.

Each review follows a typical format to make it easy to compare and contrast different reviews as well as gaining the most basic information first and easily too. Each review has several fields that have to be filled in for ease of reference: -

∙ Operator and Date – this field merely contains the name of the operator, for example First Choice and the month and year the holiday was taken. The operator name is given so you can see which operators actually use the particular hotel or complex to aid in ease of booking and the date is given so you can see how recent the review is and take into account any changes or modernisations that may have occurred.

∙ Opinion Submitted – this field gives the date the opinion was submitted and also the contact details of the author. This can range from a name or a nickname so as to maintain confidentiality or can go as far as to quote an email address – it’s completely at the discretion of the author but if an email address is given it’s normally a sign that the author doesn’t mind you contacting them with further questions.

∙ Resort Rating – the various ratings are already designated as excellent, very good, good, average, below average and poor and the author has the choice to pick one of them to describe their experience of the resort in general (this refers to more than the accommodation and encompasses the surrounding areas and amenities too).

∙ Accommodation Rating – the ratings are the same as for resort rating and again give a precise opinion of the accommodation itself by taking into account all the various features. If a hotel has many reviews (some have up to 50) then it’s often easier to go through and merely count the various accommodation ratings to give you an idea of the quality and standard of the hotel.

∙ My/Our Holiday Opinion – this provides the main bulk of the review and allows the author to write freely and express his/her opinions of the holiday itself (from the tour operators to the resort to the actual accommodation). The only guideline that is given by the site is not to include offensive comments about individual people or nationalities in general as (obviously) this may cause offence. But apart from that rather vague guideline you’re free to write whatever you want! The majority of these sections are useful, some people go into great detail to tell you the best bars to visit, the location of the nicest beaches and the cheapest place to hire cars from so as you can see, the advice offered by some is truly invaluable! Others provide a great warning as well by telling you of the state of disrepair of the hotel, the cockroach infestations and the food poisoning that occurs every year! This is easily the most precious part of the individual review.

** Add a Review **

Once you’ve past the home page and reached the main index page where all the locations are listed you have the opportunity to add your own review. There’s a small link in the bottom right hand corner which says “Add a Link” and by clicking on this you’ll be taken to a new page where you’re given clear instructions and the format is much the same as the format in which you view the reviews.

There’s a section to choose your holiday destination (from a drop down menu), one to enter the accommodation and resort name, one for the tour operator and month of travel, a section to submit your name and location then two separate tick box sections for the resort and accommodation ratings. Below all this is a large white box for you to type in your opinion with the instructions “Please type absolutely anything that you think will help other holidaymakers.”

Once you’ve filled in all the relevant sections you merely click on “Submit Form” and it will be sent away to be moderated – basically I think this consists of it being checked for swearing and giving out any names or contact details that shouldn’t be there. Within 24 hours it’ll be on the site!

** Quality & Reliability **

The reviews on this site differ immensely in their quality – some people will merely write a sentence complaining about the lack of clean bedding while others will border on an essay and consist of about 10 paragraphs describing everything from the room to the local transport! Of course the most helpful reviews are arguably the ones that go into the most detail – when I’m booking my holiday I want to know what the food’s like, what time it’s served, how much the drinks are, when the rooms are cleaned, etc! The more the better in my opinion!

It must be remembered though that everything on this site is wrote from the personal opinion of an individual – if one person had a bad experience at this hotel then this will be expressed in their review and as such it may slightly bias their opinion of other parts of the holiday too. In comparison if someone paid £200 for their holiday they may think they got a wonderful bargain and write about the hotel and resort in such a positive, glowing light whereas someone who paid £600 for the holiday may not agree that it was quite the same good value for money! Therefore it’s key to remember to take everything read with a small pinch of salt – of course if there’s 20 reviews all boasting how excellent the hotel was then you’re onto a winner but if there’s only 2 reviews (one good, one bad) it’s hard to know which to believe.

** Ease of Use **

All in all this is a really easy site to navigate around – links are all in bold, blue, underlined writing to make them easy to locate and the simple formula to follow is from the home page click enter, then use either the drop down menu or the list to take you to your location, once there use the “Find” feature to locate the hotel and hey presto that’s all you need. From that point on the only buttons you really need and the back and forward buttons to get you to different locations.

I was also surprised by how fast the site was to load with regard to the amount of information it actually contains. Some pages can contain up to 1000 reviews and yet they all load up within about 5 seconds (with a fast connection). Transportation between one page and another is practically instantaneous so no complaints here whatsoever from me!

** Extras **

From the index page there’s several extra “links” on offer to users of this site, these are all listed on the right hand page in a scroll down menu again and boast things such as Airport Parking, Car Hire, Cheap Flights, etc. By clicking on any of these a new Holidays Uncovered window will open with a list of relevant web sites and a short description of each of them. There are some worthwhile offers here, the Cheap Flights link brings up many cheap flight providers such as BMI Babe and Cheap Flights Dot Co Dot UK too.

Once you’re on the actual reviews page there’s a list of location related links, for example with the Algarve page there’s tour operators advertised who fly to the Algarve. If you see a review you like and want to book the accommodation then under each review there’s a link which offers you the chance to “Book the Hotel Direct” where you’ll be taken to alpharooms.com or by using the “Package Holidays” link you will be taken to Thoman’s homepage and the “Holidays Direct” will take you to Portland Direct’s homepage.

One of the most valuable extras on this site is the “Weather” link which gives you the temperature of any of the destinations listed on the site at that moment in time (and it gives you the time according to GMT too!). Not the most useful as if you’re still looking for that hotel you’re not going to be going there all that soon but it still fascinates me to see the variation in temperatures – sad I know!

** Limitations **

As previously stated you do need to be careful which reviews you take as truth and which others you regard with a pinch of salt – at the end of the day one bad meal can put a negative light on the whole holiday so be realistic!

The only other limitation really is that sadly, this website does not cover every destination. There’s no UK or France category as of yet and very few categories for areas outside Europe. Clearly this is a website favoured by holiday goers to the Canaries, Greece and Spain as for the various Corfu alone there’s about 15 different sub categories and a total of about 4000 reviews so if you’re looking for a hotel in one of those 3 locations you’re in luck with this site! Barbados reviews are all located on a single page, in total there’s probably only about 200 and I very much doubt they cover all resorts and accommodations within Barbados!

This site boasts to have over 25000 reviews but it’s growing in number everyday, if everyone submitted just one review the site would grow and easily double – what a resource it would be then!

** My Opinion **

I think this site is a little gem; it’s certainly stopped me from making a couple of huge mistakes! I’d never book a holiday without asking the advice of this little bible; it truly is invaluable in that sense. As long as you can find your location, resort and hotel on here you’re in luck as I’ve found the majority of reviews to be fairly honest and helpful. It’s a useful site which is fast and easy to use so next time you’re thinking of booking a holiday, check this out first!

Thanks for reading! xxx
 

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