All you need to know about Weather2Travel

Colin Carter

To celebrate the start of our travel blog, we thought you might like to hear the story of Weather2Travel.com, how we got to where we are today and where we are heading in the future. Here's our first blog post at Weather2Travel.com.

The Original 'Climate Guide'

Our Climate Guides are designed to provide an instant picture of the weather at a destination for every month of the year. Since weather forecasts are not reliable beyond 3 days (and sometimes less), climate guides (i.e. average weather conditions based on the last 30 years) provide the best indication to what you can expect.

We wanted to create a unique weather guide that would be helpful to holiday-makers and travellers planning their trip. Rather than sticking just to temperature and rainfall, we wanted to include daily hours of sunshine, sea temperature, UV maximum and heat & humidity.

We wanted to present the climate guides graphically to make them easy to understand while still providing loads of information in a condensed space. We now have climate guides for over 4,000 cities, towns, holiday destinations and resorts around the world.

Real-time Weather Information

Early feedback was positive, however people still wanted to see today's weather and a weather forecast for the coming days. We then extended the website to show current conditions and 5-day forecasts and created our unique 'Holiday Weather' overview which combines the 3 guides:

Usually (Average Weather for the Current Month)
Current (Today's Weather Conditions)
Outlook (Weather Forecast for Tomorrow)

This gives you the perfect starting point for understanding the weather at a destination. We have also recently created monthly pages for each destination, so you can see the weather in Tenerife in November or Barbados in February.

You can also find written guides for countries and popular regions of the world. This includes a more detailed description of the weather and our 'What to Pack' guides.

Be Inspired - Find the right Holiday Destination

The next stage of our evolution was to create 'inspirational' tools to answer questions like 'Where can I go in November that is hot and sunny?' and 'When is the best time of the year to go to the Maldives?'.

When to travel

The When to Travel section is an extension of the Climate Guides that enables users to select a destination and some weather criteria to find which months of the year are most likely to deliver the sort of weather they are looking for. We have selected some default criteria. However everyone is different, so it is easy to change them.

Holiday Planner

The original Holiday Planner searched for destinations based on selected weather criteria. However we took this a stage further with the new version by presenting holidays, as opposed to destinations, as the results. You can now search for holidays by:

Preferred Weather
UK Departure Airport
Flight Time
Holiday Duration
Star Rating
Board Basis (i.e. All-Inclusive, Bed and Breakfast, etc?)
Price per Person

If you prefer to just search for holiday destinations, the original Holiday Planner is still available, but is now called the Destination Finder.

Moving forward into the future

We are always developing new ideas and we will continue to provide useful tools for travellers around the world. Hopefully the new developments coming soon will excite you and continue to help you plan your holidays.

We are always happy to assist with advice on the weather around the world. We are active on Lonely Planet Thorn Tree and you can also find us on Twitter and Facebook. Please continue to send us ideas and feedback about our website; they are always appreciated.

Colin Carter

Posted on Friday 31st August 2012 in: