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INTERNET INSPIRED TRAVEL
In the last ten or fifteen years the advance of the internet has enabled most extraordinary changes in the way we travel. We can book our own hotels in foreign places without having to speak the language, we can plan routes, research destinations, and see what our accommodation will look like before we ever get there, and we can share our experiences and benefit from others’ thoughts without even having to meet them.

The internet has not only benefited the traveller directly but it has enabled travel companies to slash their operating costs and undercut their rivals, gains that have been passed on to tourists, nowhere more so than the airline industry. Budget airlines’ practices have spread to the rest of the travel industry and costs are now lower for trains, ferries, car hire...

John McCarthy talks to Samantha David who uses her computer, to travel and meet people, in four areas of her life: work, family, friendship and romance; Writer and Broadcaster Judi Herman has been using the internet to rent apartments, private and commercial, all over the world for her holidays; and Travel Writer Tom Chesshyre, who has just spent the last two years flying to little known towns favoured by the internet driven budget airlines, talks about the impact it has had on the areas and the people who live there.