Social networks of tourists. Social networks in tourism Social network of travelers

Not everyone knows, but very useful travel sites. Most of the travel sites and apps on this list have been personally tested by us, something else is waiting in line, but it doesn't get any less cool.

List: Travel Sites: Travel Preparation

Travel Sites: Buying Bus Tickets in Europe

Ecolines. International bus lines that carry out communications between 21 countries and 205 cities in Europe. It is the largest and oldest carrier of Eastern Europe. For independent European trips, Ecolines is ideal, because. the flights are very inexpensive and the buses are comfortable. In addition, Ecolines has a cumulative bonus system, and with active travel you can receive free trips. It's more than real! Personally, for three trips I have accumulated bonuses for one practically free move.

Luxexpress. Another European carrier that strikes the imagination with constant promotions and discounts on tickets. For example, from St. Petersburg to Helsinki and Tallinn, you can very often leave for 400-500 rubles. The number of routes for Lukekspress is much less than for Ecolines - only 10 countries, but the prices are sometimes just symbolic, and the buses are more like business class aircraft.

Websites to buy train tickets online

Once upon a time, it became a discovery for me, and then a constant practice of buying railway tickets online. As it turned out, this can be easily done on the Russian Railways website. Yes, the interface is not the most convenient in the world, but it is a million times more pleasant than standing in endless lines at the box office. E-ticket printed out and presented upon boarding the carriage. It's simple, fast, and in addition, it allows you to choose flights and seats in the car. By the way, today Russian Railways carries out 100 international routes in 30 countries in Europe and Asia.

Tutu.ru. Search engine for air and railway tickets in Russia. It is convenient, first of all, with a complete and up-to-date schedule of commuter trains.

raileurope. A service that combines maps, timetables and fares from over 50 different rail companies across Europe. The site makes it easy to book train tickets, as well as hotels and travel programs. For fun, the site has an encyclopedia of European trains, explaining how they differ from each other and how interesting it is to spend time on the road. Discounts are provided for those traveling in a large company - both on trains and in cities.

Websites for booking cruises and sea travel

Mcruises. A site where you can choose and book a sea or river cruise around the world. The service brings together all the largest world and Russian cruise companies, informs about special offers and discounts.

Rent a car for travel

Site-leader of Runet for car rental abroad. Reservations are available from over 800 car rental companies in 150 countries. 20 thousand car rental points, Russian-speaking support service, low prices And high quality services has made this service an absolute market leader.

Transfer and so on for travel

Kiwitaxi. If you do not want to rent a car, but also public transport if you are not satisfied, you can pre-order a suitable transfer from point A to point B. How does it work? You find the desired route in cities and resorts around the world, book a transfer online, the driver meets you with a name on a sign and takes you to the place. The service operates in 65 countries around the world.

Uber. A service that is gaining international popularity for ordering a driver and searching for passengers. A convenient mobile application allows you to search, call and pay for taxis or private drivers. The application is available for dozens of cities around the world, including Russia. Using the Uber application, the customer reserves a car with a driver and tracks its movement to the specified point, payment is made using bank card details.

Sites for finding fellow travelers

Blablacar. Another world leader. A service that connects drivers and fellow travelers around the world. Just enter the city of departure, arrival and date to see a list of drivers who offer trips for your route and choose your own. Before contacting, you can see the profile of the driver with a photo, brief information about yourself and reviews. The service itself is free, but drivers usually charge money for gasoline. This is not a hitchhiking!

Poiskpoputchikov.ru. The site was created in order to provide an opportunity to find a travel companion for a vacation or any other trip, from a trip to a neighboring city to a hitchhiking around the world.

Travel sites where you can book Accommodation, Hotels, Hostels

A well-known site that presents ads from individuals - owners of apartments and houses. Today it is so popular that I will not even recommend any analogue, because. I think that all landlords already have pages on, even if they used to prefer some other resource. I wrote two articles about this site. This is a really cool resource that allows you to find great apartments abroad.

Booking.com. The world's largest site for finding and booking hotels and hostels. A huge database of options, honest reviews, good prices, excellent support - this is why so many people choose booking. This site is good if you are planning a trip to Europe, Northern and latin america, Australia.

If you want to find a good option accommodation on the territory former USSR, here the Ostrovok.ru search engine is out of competition.

For Asia, the best place to look for hotels is on Agoda.com.

An excellent database of hostels can be found at Hostelworld.com.

home exchange. House exchange. The database on the site contains more than 65 thousand real houses in 150 countries of the world. If you have your own accommodation, you can exchange your homes with property owners from another country for the duration of your vacation. The service has existed since 1992, when it all started with a book guide for those who wanted to exchange houses.

Well, and, of course, adored by all travelers (and us too) Couchsurfing.com. A site where you can find free housing and a great company in an unfamiliar city.

Websites for buying air tickets online

ayak One of the most reliable services for finding travel offers, buying air tickets, booking hotels and renting cars. The site works with hundreds of sites of travel companies and airlines around the world and selects the most profitable deals for customers. At the same time, Kayak redirects directly to the booking pages of service providers

Onetwotrip. About the same as Kayak. True, there are only flights and hotels. Has a cool bonus program. For me, the site is not much different from other ticket search engines, but the number of acquaintances who are ardent adherents of this site is so large that it was provided with a place on this list.

Momondo. An international travel site that allows you to quickly and easily organize your trip on your own. On it you can find a whole set of free tools for competently searching for cheap flights, hotels and accommodation for rent, as well as car rentals.

Anywayanyday. Russian analogue of the above sites. Winner of many travel awards in the field of online services. Worthy of attention.

Sites for buying tours online

Level Travel. If you need organized tour, but solo travel tired of the end, then The best way find a great tour - this is Level Travel's tour search engine. The service searches for all leading tour operators and allows you to book tours directly with them, without the participation of travel agencies. Those. you will not see any extra charges, and the tour will cost as much as the operator. Too cool to be true, but it's not a dream))

Online hypermarket tours. The best prices from 120 reliable tour operators.

Travel Sites List: City Maps

maps.me. Free App for phones on any platform. We use only these cards, and they are simply beautiful! After installing the application, you need to download a map of the country you need, and then the map with all the symbols, sights, hotels, hostels, restaurants will work offline! If your phone supports GPS, then when combined with maps.me, you can forget about awkward conversations in crooked French/Chinese/Portuguese trying to figure out exactly where to get off the bus and how to find the museum.

Travel translators

Google Translator as an app for Android or iPhone will help you find a common language with foreigners without any problems. More than 90 languages ​​are supported offline, although you need to download the necessary language packs in advance. This translator saved us more than once, but, of course, the translation of phrases is far from always perfect.

Travel Sites: Leisure & Entertainment

geocaching. is a world travel game, the essence of which is to hide and search for treasures. Geocaching has been around for 15 years and connects more than 6 million people from all over the world. the globe. Today, 2.5 million caches are hidden in 200 countries of the world, and every day their number is growing. It's a great way to have fun, find unusual places new city, and meet curious people.

Izi travel. A service that contains a large and high-quality, and most importantly free collection of audio guides to cities and museums. Before the trip, you can install the izi.travel application on your smartphone and enjoy excursions from professional guides, as well as amateurs. Some content on the site is paid.

A site designed for booking Russian-language excursions around the world. Today it offers 4088 excursions in 566 cities of the world.

tripster. "Your people around the world." The service carries out two large projects: unique excursions from local residents and the international community of travelers, which is presented in the form of a giant forum with questions and answers about any city in the world. If you have absolutely no idea what to do in the city, ask a question on this forum and get recommendations from locals.

stay.com. A site that generates for you an individual guide to the most interesting places selected city. You choose interesting sights, and the service creates a detailed guide with maps and descriptions, which you can print or download to your mobile device and use offline. And all this for free!

Websites for free travel

workaway. Leading site in the search for volunteer work abroad. Volunteering means an extremely wide range of tasks: from teaching English (for example) to building a farm, from working in a hostel to caring for the elderly. As a “salary” for their work, volunteers receive housing, food, interesting communication, immersion in the culture of the country, and often other bonuses (discounts on excursions, participation in master classes, etc.). Transport must be paid for by yourself.

European Voluntary Service. European Volunteer Service. Within the framework of EVS, there are dozens of programs lasting from 2 to 12 months. All of them are funded by the European Commission, and the programs can be both inside and outside the European Union. These projects, as a rule, have a social focus and are designed for young people aged 18 to 30 years. The candidate is required to possess certain skills, the level of a foreign language, and sometimes, the presence of special education. The European Commission, in turn, covers the cost of accommodation, meals, transport, insurance, daily expenses, a training cycle, including language courses and 90% of the cost of the flight.

Study tours to Poland. STP are study visits to Poland for students, young professionals and professionals from Eastern European countries (North-West region of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova). The program is divided into two large blocks - for students (from 18 to 21 years old) and for working people (without age restrictions). The trip is completely free: participants pay for travel, accommodation, meals, all activities during the visit, as well as visa processing.

Travel Sites: Other

Wikibook on hitchhiking. If you are planning a hitchhiking trip for the first time, this tutorial has absolutely everything.

Wikitravel. A project whose goal is to create a free, free, up-to-date and reliable world guide. There are currently 1657 guidebooks in Russian and other articles written and edited by wiki travelers from all over the world.

And a bonus, final link - Travelzakladka. A site that contains a lot (more than three hundred!) of various travel resources: top LiveJournal, websites, VKontakte communities, independent blogs, magazines, TV channels, TV programs, hotel search engines, maps, forums, railway tickets, language tourism, exotic tourism, extreme tourism, visas, guides, tour operators, cruises, diving, car rental, air tickets, insurance, travel youtube channels, travel blogs on Instagram.

Travel community.
Blogs, forums. Information on all countries of the world and cities.
The information is collected by users, so while the information is in the most visited places in the world.
The service is tied to a Google map. The search for new experiences is the main goal of creating the Turbine website.
The turbine is a space that unites people who are aware of the value of their knowledge and experience for the world around them. This is a space in which everyone can discover something new for themselves and for others.
Something new that can give amazing emotions and impressions, and that is so easy to miss due to lack of time or lack of information in guidebooks! The purpose of the site is to provide you with a source of interesting, useful and reliable information collected by real travelers and allowing you to feel more confident in the distance from home, which means paying more attention to what surrounds you. Sections "Tapes", "All photos" (more than a million), diaries (we combine notes about one trip into a single structure).
You can collect materials in piggy banks on certain areas or topics, subscribe to everything new in cities and countries of interest to you, book flights and hotels at the best prices, and help other members of the community by answering questions and participating in discussions on forums.

Hello! I bring to your attention my author's selection of useful services for travelers. Most of the sites and apps on this list have been personally tested by us, something else is waiting in its turn, but it does not become less cool. Of course, the list can go on forever, but in my opinion, below is a solid base for bright, powerful, inexpensive and enjoyable travel.

Travel preparation

Buses in Europe

15. . International bus lines that carry out communications between 21 countries and 205 cities in Europe. It is the largest and oldest carrier in Eastern Europe. For independent European trips, Ecolines is ideal, because. the flights are very inexpensive and the buses are comfortable. In addition, Ecolines has a cumulative bonus system, and with active travel you can get free trips. It's more than real! Personally, for three trips I have accumulated bonuses for one practically free move.

16. . Another European carrier that strikes the imagination with constant promotions and discounts on tickets. For example, from St. Petersburg to Helsinki and Tallinn, you can very often leave for 400-500 rubles. The number of routes for Lukekspress is much less than for Ecolines - only 10 countries, but the prices are sometimes just symbolic, and the buses are more like business class aircraft.

Train tickets

17. Once upon a time, it was a discovery for me, and then a constant practice, buying railway tickets online. As it turned out, this can be easily done on the site. Yes, the interface is not the most convenient in the world, but it is a million times more pleasant than standing in endless lines at the box office. The electronic ticket is printed out and presented upon boarding the carriage. It's simple, fast, and in addition, it allows you to choose flights and seats in the car. By the way, today Russian Railways operates 100 international routes in 30 countries of Europe and Asia.

eighteen. . Search engine for air and railway tickets in Russia. It is convenient, first of all, with a complete and up-to-date schedule of commuter trains.

19. . A service that combines maps, timetables and fares from over 50 different rail companies across Europe. The site makes it easy to book train tickets, as well as hotels and travel programs. For fun, the site has an encyclopedia of European trains, explaining how they differ from each other and how interesting it is to spend time on the road. Discounts are provided for those traveling in a large company - both on trains and in cities.

Cruises and sea travel

twenty. . A site where you can choose and book a sea or river cruise around the world. The service brings together all the largest world and Russian cruise companies, informs about special offers and discounts.

Car rent

21. . Site-leader of Runet for car rental abroad. Reservations are available from over 800 car rental companies in 150 countries. 20 thousand car rental points, Russian-speaking support service, low prices and high quality of services have made this service the absolute market leader.

Transfer

22. . If you do not want to rent a car, but public transport does not suit you either, you can pre-order a suitable transfer from point A to point B. How does it work? You find the desired route in cities and resorts around the world, book a transfer online, the driver meets you with a name on a sign and takes you to the place. The service operates in 65 countries around the world.

23. . A service that is gaining international popularity for ordering a driver and searching for passengers. A convenient mobile application allows you to search, call and pay for taxis or private drivers. The application is available for dozens of cities around the world, including Russia. Using the Uber application, the customer reserves a car with a driver and tracks its movement to the specified point, payment is made using bank card details.

Search for fellow travelers

24. . Another world leader. A service that connects drivers and fellow travelers around the world. Just enter the city of departure, arrival and date to see a list of drivers who offer trips for your route and choose your own. Before contacting, you can view the driver's profile with a photo, brief information about yourself and reviews. The service itself is free, but drivers usually charge money for gasoline. Is not !

25. . The site was created in order to provide an opportunity to find a travel companion for a vacation or any other trip, from a trip to a neighboring city to a hitchhiking around the world.

Housing

26. . A well-known site that contains ads from individuals - owners of apartments and houses. Today it is so popular that I will not even recommend any analogue, because. I think that all landlords already have an airbnb page, even if they used to prefer some other resource. I wrote two articles about this site. This is a really cool resource that allows you to find great apartments abroad.

27. . The world's largest site for finding and booking hotels and hostels. Huge base of options, honest reviews, good prices, great support - this is why so many people choose it. This site is good if you are planning a trip to Europe, North and Latin America, Australia.

28. If you want to find a good accommodation option on the territory of the former USSR, the search engine is out of competition here.

29. For Asia, it is best to look for hotels on.

30. An excellent base of hostels is contained on the site.

31. . House exchange. The database on the site contains more than 65 thousand real houses in 150 countries of the world. If you have your own accommodation, you can exchange your homes with property owners from another country for the duration of your vacation. The service has existed since 1992, when it all started with a book directory of those wishing to exchange houses.

32. Well, and, of course, adored by all travelers (and by us too). A site where you can find free housing and a great company in an unfamiliar city.

Online travel agencies

33. One of the most reliable services for finding travel offers, buying air tickets, booking hotels and renting cars. The site works with hundreds of sites of travel companies and airlines around the world and selects the most profitable deals for customers. At the same time, Kayak redirects directly to the booking pages of service providers

34. . About the same as Kayak. True, there are only flights and hotels. Has a great bonus program. For me, the site is not much different from other ticket search engines, but the number of acquaintances who are ardent adherents of this site is so large that it was provided with a place on this list.

35. . An international travel site that allows you to quickly and easily organize your trip on your own. On it you can find a whole set of free tools for competently searching for cheap flights, hotels and accommodation for rent, as well as car rentals.

36. . Russian analogue of the above sites. Winner of many travel awards in the field of online services. Worthy of attention.

Organized tours

37. . If you need an organized tour and are tired of independent travel to the end, then the best way to find a great tour is to use the Level Travel tour search engine. The service searches for all leading tour operators and allows you to book tours directly with them, without the participation of travel agencies. Those. you will not see any extra charges, and the tour will cost as much as the operator. Too cool to be true, but it's not a dream))

38. . Online hypermarket tours. The best prices from 120 reliable tour operators.

City maps

39. . Free app for phones on any platform. We use only these cards, and they are simply beautiful! After installing the application, you need to download a map of the country you need, and then the map with all the symbols, sights, hotels, hostels, restaurants will work offline! If your phone supports GPS, then when combined with maps.me, you can forget about awkward conversations in crooked French/Chinese/Portuguese trying to figure out exactly where to get off the bus and how to find the museum.

Translator

40. Google translator as an application for or will help you find a common language with foreigners without any problems. More than 90 languages ​​are supported offline, although you need to download the necessary language packs in advance. This translator saved us more than once, but, of course, the translation of phrases is far from always perfect.

Leisure and entertainment

41. . Geocaching is a worldwide travel game, the essence of which is to hide and search for treasures. Geocaching has been around for 15 years and brings together more than 6 million people from all over the globe. Today, 2.5 million caches are hidden in 200 countries of the world, and every day their number is growing. This is a great way to have fun, find unusual places in a new city, and meet curious people.

42. . A service that contains a large and high-quality, and most importantly free collection of audio guides to cities and museums. Before the trip, you can install the izi.travel application on your smartphone and enjoy excursions from professional guides, as well as amateurs. Some content on the site is paid.

43. . A site designed for booking Russian-language excursions around the world. Today it offers 4088 excursions in 566 cities of the world.

44. . "Your people around the world." The service carries out two big projects: unique excursions from local residents and the international community of travelers, which is presented in the form of a giant forum with questions and answers about any city on the planet. If you have absolutely no idea what to do in the city, ask a question on this forum and get recommendations from locals.

45. . A site that generates for you an individual guide to the most interesting places in the selected city. You choose interesting sights, and the service creates a detailed guide with maps and descriptions, which you can print or download to your mobile device and use offline. And all this for free!

Free Travel Programs

46. ​​. Leading site in the search for volunteer work abroad. Volunteering means an extremely wide range of tasks: from teaching English (for example) to building a farm, from working in a hostel to caring for the elderly. As a “salary” for their work, volunteers receive housing, food, interesting communication, immersion in the culture of the country, and often other bonuses (discounts on excursions, participation in master classes, etc.). Transport must be paid for by yourself.

47. European Volunteer Service. Within the framework of EVS, there are dozens of programs lasting from 2 to 12 months. All of them are funded by the European Commission, and the programs can be both inside and outside the European Union. These projects, as a rule, have a social focus and are designed for young people aged 18 to 30 years. The candidate is required to possess certain skills, the level of a foreign language, and sometimes, the presence of special education. The European Commission, in turn, covers the cost of accommodation, meals, transport, insurance, daily expenses, a training cycle, including language courses and 90% of the cost of the flight.

48. . STP are study visits to Poland for students, young professionals and professionals from Eastern European countries (North-West region of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova). The program is divided into two large blocks - for students (from 18 to 21 years old) and for working people (without age restrictions). The trip is completely free: participants pay for travel, accommodation, meals, all activities during the visit, as well as visa processing.

Other

49. . If you are planning a hitchhiking trip for the first time, this tutorial has absolutely everything.

fifty. . A project whose goal is to create a free, free, up-to-date and reliable world guide. There are currently 1657 guidebooks in Russian and other articles written and edited by wiki travelers from all over the world.

And a bonus, final link - . A site that contains a lot (more than three hundred!) of various travel resources: top LiveJournal, websites, VKontakte communities, independent blogs, magazines, TV channels, TV programs, hotel search engines, maps, forums, railway tickets, language tourism, exotic tourism, extreme tourism, visas, rental housing, guidebooks, tour operators, cruises, diving, car rental, air tickets, insurance, youtube travel channels, travel blogs on Instagram.

Friends, I understand perfectly well that all the cool services did not fit in this post! Therefore, this topic will continue. Please share in the comments really useful, high quality and interesting websites/apps/online companies/programs for travelers. I will definitely include your cool links in the next article!

Hope you found something useful here!

P.S. By the way, all blog subscribers receive from our partners.

• Sergey Dolya is one of the most interesting people, which has long been loved by fans of virtual travel. The main page has a list of visited countries with reports.
• Ilya Varlamov - has an original hairstyle and the same approach to writing reports about the countries visited. The blog consists of various sections, including criticism of Russian cities, visits to other countries and some interesting notes about urbanization.
• Alexander Cheban - on account of more than 55 visited countries.
• Sergei Vitko is a traveler who never plans which country he will fly to next and what he will write about.
• Eduard Gavailer is our compatriot who now lives in Germany. Often visits small European cities.
• Alexander Belenky is a relatively young blogger (since 2011). Publishes travel reports, countries and cities.
• Artur Shigapov - writes posts about people from different countries. Interesting notes, easy to read, no analytical articles and politics.
• Kitya Karlson lives in Japan but travels all over the world. His blog is about notes on ordinary things that happen among us.
• Petr Lovygin is an artist who designs his travel reports in an original way.
• Fedor Konyukhov is a priest-traveler, the most famous bearded man of the Russian land.
• Olga Kostyuk is a girl who has visited many Asian countries, including India.
• Elena Bass - writes about Italy and European cities. Works as a guide.
• Paul - lives in Germany. He writes mainly about European cities.
• Yulia Buruleva is a traveler, photographer, party organizer.
• kuzulka - amazing instagram shots. The blog is designed for a female audience.
• Vlad Karavaev - interesting reports from Russia and neighboring countries.
• Alexander Savchenko - traveled all over our vast country, visited China and the Philippines.
• Aleksey Nasedkin - illustrated virtual travel magazine.
• Ivan Dementievsky is a journalist who travels mainly in Russian latitudes.
• Dmitry Malov - traveled to many countries, described many rare and exotic places.
• bravebeaver - travel notes.
• Denis Frantsuzov - travels around Russia in a four-wheel drive SUV. Prefers abandoned places.
• Vadim Nardin - likes to travel a lot and take pictures of girls in these wanderings.
• AL-31F - writes a lot on various topics, often travels, only happens in interesting places.
• Dmitry Islentiev is a married couple who shares his impressions with readers.
• Ashblacklad is a professional photographer, a lover of nature and cozy towns.
• Alexander Chernykh is a professional blogger who publishes notes from different countries.
• Igor Vinogradov - travels around exotic places and tells about the life of their inhabitants.
• Sergey Nagorny - leads a video blog, shoots reviews of different countries.
• Alexey Pevnev is a Kaliningrad-based blogger who publishes fascinating travel reports.
• Enia Kulish - a lot of interesting things about different countries, there are good posts about diving.