http://www.luxuryexplorer.com/

A recent addition to the luxury travel market, luxuryexplorer.com has assembled plenty of ideas across the range of top-end travel options.

The attractive design features a wonderful interactive world map, on which you can zoom in quickly on the photographic quality image to get details of locations that can be booked through the site.

Unfortunately you can't book on the site because it takes you to the offers on the partner sites (where you can usually make an online booking), but with it being high class holidays each is beautifully designed and companies like Aman resorts are famous enough to trust.

Most holidays are quoted in dollars or euros, presumably because the holidays can be booked from around the world and don't generally include flights. It would be nice to have quotes in pounds.

Partners and destinations are limited at the moment, but more are being added.

The portal should a success for those with money to burn who require inspiration and may be short of time to search for individual hotels or companies on the web.

http://www.aito.co.uk/

The Association of Independent Tour Operators launched a new website in August, including over 150 operators and a searchable database of holidays.

With a clear, attractive desiign and fantastic array of destinations, as befits an organisation representing operators of all kinds of specialist holidays as well as the usual such as Fench Villas, each holiday featured has a page with full details and a link to the operator's own website.

Other services include information on destinations, brochure ordering and an AITO classification for responsible tourism assigned to members.

http://www.nationaltrails.co.uk/
 
The new site dedicated to the 15 designated National Trails in England and Wales is an invaluable resource for hikers, ramblers and anyone who wants to take in some of the great British countryside.

National Trails cover 2,500 miles of some of the most spectacular scenery. The site has lots of photos, news on new paths and events and a very nice interactive map of the routes and links through to individual sites dedicated to each trail. Trails are spread far and wide and cover locations as diverse as the Pembrokeshre Coast National Park, the Pennine Way and the Thames Path.

Not-for-profit information sites that are as attractive as these are a breath of fresh air considering the budget and design restrictions of other non-commercial web projects.

http://www.onlinetravelbrochures.com/

A new site from http://www.surf2travel.com/, the self-proclaimed 'Google' of travel, this is an excellent service that allows you to view travel brochures from travel agents in a downloadable format, saving paper and any need to wait for the post.

Most types of holidays and a wide array of destinations are already included. The quality of downloads is pretty good, so help the environment and get get clicking.

http://www.mapminder.co.uk/

Excellent interactive UK map and event site. Just when you thought there was nothing better than Streetmap as an online source for directions at the click of a button, along comes this cracking all-singing all-dancing effort.

Streetmap may be better if you need a printout in a hurry, but some of the many advantages of Mapminder is the ability to search listings of nearby buildings and companies. You can find restaurants, bars and entertainment, book hotels and more  with partner sites like http://www.toptable.co.uk/, Harden's Restaurant Guide and the Good Pub Guide providing reviews as well as PA's entertainment listings.

The disadvantage of the website is that it requires paid subscription, at £2.95 a month, but it may well be worth it. We'll we giving the free 30-day trial a go to see.

Times Online hasn't been able to test the full effectiveness of the service yet, so let us know how well it works for your area.

http://www.lythhillhouse.com/

Lyth Hill House won Visit England's Tourism Website of the Year award at a ceremony yesterday.

Despite it being a small business, they have made an effort to provide extra information and pictures of rooms, the grounds and facilities. You can see multiple  views of each room and there is even a floor plan PDF option.

Just the kind of information overload that increases confidence for making a booking.

http://www.travelrepublic.co.uk/

This airline booking site claims to be unique in providing  search of charter airlines online.

Now that the flight only market has been flooded with the charter destinations, the independent traveller can pick up a bargain to places that were previously available only as packages and can be further afield than no-frills destinations. The opportunity to explore places like Luxor and Cancun without having to stick to tacky resorts may be too much to resist.

www.moneysavingexpert.co.uk/flightchecker

This site is dedicated to all aspects of saving money for consumers.

The design is far from pretty, but it is worth persisting for a couple of nifty features in the travel section.

You can get advice in the form of articles by the resident expert on the most cost-efficient way to change currency and finding package bargains among other things.

The really impressive service though is a recently launched flightchecker. You can select a date range for a specific low-cost flight destination within a range of many months and it will list all the airlines, flights and costs available (before tax). Therefore, if you are flexible about when you travel it is possible to get the lowest advertised rates if available, or at least the cheapest date and time to travel.