WHY do most holiday websites INSIST i put in a destination?

motorguy

OK, want to book a holiday for two, start of May, 2 weeks, all inclusive, four or five stars.

WHY does the likes of lastminute.com (and thomascook from memory) insist i put in a destination? And with lastminute.com they insist i put in a SPECIFIC destination, ie, not just Spain, or Canary Islands.

Or am i doing it wrong? :mad:

Would appreciate any site recommendations.

Rolandtheroadie

Travel Republic and On The Beach? Direct Holidays and Sunmaster might be worth a look too.

Find the same with some sites, I've 3 kids and dont think lastminute.com even allow us to select 5 of us in 1 room.

richardw

Your point came up quite recently and there were some good points made, try a forum search.

Dr._Shoe

Why not try an old-school high street travel agent if you can find one.

sazaccount

I think its money supermarket/travel supermarket that you can "let them inspire you" just putting in the dates and departure airports

xx

xHannahx

Thomas Cook and Thomson/ first choice both allow you to select anywhere.

bagand96

www.loveholidays.com
www.latedeals.co.uk
www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk

motorguy

Cheers folks.

I'll have a look at the suggestions.

:beer:

Surprised some of the seemingly big players dont allow you to search this way.

SW17

motorguy wrote: »

Surprised some of the seemingly big players dont allow you to search this way.

It's often a technical issue. To provide a result to such a general search, the website would either

Restrict the search in the background (i.e. you think you are searching "everywhere", but in fact you are getting a result for a predefined set of recommended destinations/holidays)

Or (more likely)

Cache the data from suppliers and hold rates / availability on their system. This gives much more flexible and complex search capability, but can have the downside that sometimes the rates and availability have changed when you book (depending how often they update the cache). Not all websites have this capability on their underlying system.

To do live searches of suppliers on such a non-specific search would take too long and make the website very unpopular with its suppliers due to massive search volume.

glentoran99

try icelolly.com for searching as well to get ideas of destinations