On the internet and vacation planning

Keeping with the Canadian “tradition” of going to a warm place in the middle of the winter, my friends and I decided to hit the Caribbean for the Christmas holidays. Also, keeping with the tradition of poor students, we waited until the last minute to look for good vacation deals. The process of looking into a Caribbean vacation showed me just how great the internet is as a source of information, not like this wasn’t already known to everybody reading this. Having said that, let me elaborate on how we used the internet to research our vacation.

While we were discussing our main reason behind going to the Caribbean, I mentioned “the ocean.” Since we were going in the winter I had to get confirmation if the water temperature was good enough for me to swim in. The internet quickly provided me with an answer. I was also able to pull out historical weather data from the past few years to see just how warm Cuba is in December.

To search for our vacation package, we used a few sites like selloffvacations.com, orbitz.ca, and the likes. We were able to pick and choose from tons of vacation spots and resorts. After narrowing down the playing field to two we had to look further into them to see where they’re located, what the food is like, etc. One of our choices was Club Amigo near Holguin, Cuba. Of course we looked up Holguin to see how big of a city it is and what kind of off resort entertainment it can offer. We then searched through Google Maps to see just what it looks like from above. After that we searched through tripadvisor.com for reviews by regular people who have been there recently. We learned that Club Amigo provides an amazing beach with OK food, and that it’s mainly a family destination. We then researched the exchange rate between Pesos and Dollars to estimate what it would cost to rent a car.

We then looked into Getaway Resort in Mexico. We learned that it was an 18 and above resort, where massive parties take place, and bed sheets have “perma-stains.” The beach there was horrible, and the staff was not very helpful. So we crossed that off the list. We did the same research for several other resorts only to find that most resorts at this time of the year are a family destination.

Almost giving up on our vacation hunt, I suggested we go to the mall to Flight Centre and see if they can help us pick something. It was Saturday, at 8:45 pm and we weren’t sure of the mall’s Christmas hours. Googling the hours told us we have 45 minutes to make it over there.

Long story short, the travel agent convinced us to visit South Beach, Florida instead of the Caribbean. We went home and went on hotels.ca. We pinpointed the exact hotel we wanted using the power of Google Maps and satellite imaging. We even confirmed the picture of the hotel pool by comparing the one on hotel.ca with the one on Google Maps. We then checked out nearby clubs, beaches, kayaking, etc. Having acquired all the information we were interested in we all agreed that South Beach offered it all. Good water, in a busy City, with the potential of lots of different activities. Now all we have to do is pack our bags and head down to Florida…. in about 2 weeks.

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