Travel

Researching a holiday used to be an uncertain experience. Prospective travellers were generally confined to three resources: brochures, travel agents and guidebooks. The pitfalls of relying on the former two are obvious there's a vested interest in signing you up while guidebooks are often out of date. Outside the Telegraph travel sections, the chances of getting balanced, up-to-date information about a holiday were pretty limited.

The digital revolution has changed all that. Thanks to the wealth of blogs "web logs", or diaries, on the internet we can access thousands of travel reviews and commentaries from travellers who provide candid, up-to-the-moment and on-the-spot reports. They are a great place to unearth local gems, get news updates and read about specialist topics.

Armchair travellers, meanwhile, can pick and choose whose adventure they want to follow, be it one person's account of a year abroad, a circumnavigation of the globe or an expedition. And the ultimate antidote to saccharine tourist-office films and advertisements are video blogs vlogs anonymously filmed by paying customers and then published on travel websites.

Peter Ward, co-founder of wayn (Where Are You Now), one of the biggest travel blogging sites, says that much of the appeal of blogs lies in their openness: they allow the readers to join in the conversation. "You can communicate with the person who has written the blog. You can send a message to the person who has written it and ask them for more details. It brings an additional dimension to things."