Sunday, April 12, 2009

Whl.Travel - local voices about local travel

The Whl Travel Network bills itself as one of the largest collections of locally run travel websites, where your information and transactions are handled at the local level rather than by massive consolidators like Expedia, Priceline, Orbitz, etc.

I'm not clear how much of the network is truly the voice of locals but this is a great idea and a good source for potentially "less biased" information than you will tend to find on the large sites or even local destination promotion websites.

One of the great challenges of planning trips online is that there is a huge incentive for many sites to showcase their areas very favorably. This is likely true at Whl.Travel as well, but at least you are less likely to be led only to the hotels and attractions that have the best ROI ratios for marketing agencies.