Boo.com is a site which offers travel advice from its users. The site has over 2 million reviews written for over 2,500 destinations, all by users of the site. User-contributed content is divided into categories, including hotel reviews, travel guides to specific places, attractions, restaurant reviews and nightlife reviews. The site has a very active userbase of people who like to travel, and many contribute content. Some of the content is also written by the Boo.com staff. Users can contribute reviews, upload photos, and share their experience with places they've visited. Travel guides are available to most major cities worldwide, including smaller cities that are popular tourist destinations. The information is very high quality, as it is contributed by people who have actually visited the places they are reviewing. The site is an excellent resource for travelers planning a trip anywhere in the world. Users can search places by keyword or browse by category. Categories include hotels, travel guides, attractions, restaurants and nightlife. Boo.com was originally founded in 1998 as a retailer of fashion and sportswear. The site was later purchased by Web Reservations International and turned into a travel advice website. Based in Dublin, San Francisco, Shanghai and Sydney, the company has 100 staff who speak 18 languages. The Boo.com travel site was shut down in November 2010. The domain was redirected to Hostelworld.com. Competition to Boo.com comes from sites such as Hostelworld.com, Tripadvisor.com and Lonelyplanet.com. All of these sites offer similar services to Boo.com, but Boo.com has more user-contributed content than any of these three sites. Hostelworld.com concentrates on reviews of hostels in locations worldwide, but also has reviews of attractions, restaurants and nightlife. Tripadvisor.com and Lonelyplanet.com are more similar to Boo.com in content. The Boo.com has a very Web 2.0 look and feel. The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. Navigation is intuitive, with a convenient top menu bar provided for the various categories of reviews. Advertising is displayed on the site, but it is relatively unobtrusive. Registration to Boo.com is not required to view travel advice on the website, but is required in order to contribute content. The registration process asks the user for username, email address and password. Validation of the email address is not required. After registration, the user is prompted for more complete profile information, but this step is optional. No premium membership is offered to the Boo.com site, and free registration provides users with access to all features of the site. The Boo.com site is recommended to anyone who is planning a trip or just likes to travel. It provides a place where users can share their travel experience with others, while gaining travel advice for most any destination. A very active userbase is involved in contributing content to the site, and the staff-written content is high in quality.

• Travel advice contributed by users who have actually visited the places they write about
• Content is divided into categories including hotel reviews, travel guides to specific destination, restaurant reviews and nightlife reviews
• Registered users can contribute content about places they've visited
• Over 2,000,000 reviews of over 2,500 destinations are available on the site
• Some content, such as some of the travel guides and reviews is written by the Boo.com staff, which is based throughout the world