What can you use the application for?
Yourtour.com is a travel planning and booking site that automatically generates a tour of a given area based on start and end dates entered by the user. The site currently supports tours in France only -- other countries are in the planning stage. The site is very easy to use and produces surprisingly good results. The user first enters the region of the country they want to tour. Then they enter a starting and ending date for the tour and choose whether they want a circular or linear route. The user then presses “Build My Tour”, and in a couple of minutes the site returns with a detailed itinerary and map with driving directions for the tour, including stops at places of interest and hotel recommendations for each night.
The itinerary shows the cost of driving for each leg of the trip, as well as the cost of the hotel for each night. A 5-day tour for the region of Alsace turned up results with four places of interest to visit each day, with a detailed description of each place. The user can choose to include or exclude each item in the tour. The example also provided a hotel recommendation along with a detailed description of the hotel. The user can search for other places of interest and hotels and add them to the tour if they wish. The total price of the tour is displayed on the last page of the tour. Once the user has customized the tour to their liking, pressing Book My Tour causes the site to make the hotel bookings for each night of the tour. The user is given the option to choose the type of room they want for each hotel.
What is the history and popularity of the application?
Yourtour.com was launched by Decizium in September 2009. The site is still in beta at time of review.
What are the differences to other applications?
Competition to Yourtour.com comes from travel planning sites such as Travelocity and Orbitz. The major difference that Yourtour.com brings to the table is that it automates a most of the process involved in a user planning their own tour. The site provides travel-agency like service at a do-it-yourself price. Planning a tour on Travelocity or Orbitz requires quite a lot of manual work.
How does the application look and feel to use?
The YourTour.com site has a very clean and uncluttered look and feel. The site is very easy to use, and is quite responsive. Planning a tour takes only minutes, and the user can customize the tour as much as they want. The site returns excellent descriptions of places of interest and hotels. Navigation is intuitive, and planning of an example tour came off without any glitches. There is no advertising displayed on the YourTour.com site.
How does the registration process work?
Registration to the YourTour.com site is free and is not required to plan a tour, Registration is required, however to book a tour. The registration process asks for username, password and email address. Validation of the email address is required.
What does it cost to use the application?
Registration is free and there is no premium membership offered to the Yourtour.com site.
Who would you recommend the application to?
The Yourtour.com site is recommended to anyone who needs to plan a tour. The service produces excellent results, and has a lot of potential, particularly as they add new countries. The site works very well for planning a tour of any region of France, and should prove successful if this level of quality is provided as they add countries.
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