Scott at VacationCounts

While many of us haven't been able to travel since over a year ago, most of us are still earning paid vacation days on the job. Time off is money even if you can't take a vacation far from home. VacationCounts has been fully updated for 2021 and includes the list of official US holidays so you can track your company time off benefits. Don't rely on your HR portal to track your time off usage...

After writing about time-off optimization (some call it work-life balance) for years, I've finally built a web app that helps people fulfill this goal. I've used a variety of general purpose tools to keep track of my time off benefits and plan trips online, but none were geared toward people who make travel a major part of their life. My personal vacation details, files, photos, and notes are...

I often open up both GetYourGuide and Viator when planning a trip to see what day tour opportunities are available. I like the fact that you can use the app and book a tour without an account. Lots of quality choices and easy to use, but I'm not sure how to differentiate it from Viator. They are both very similar in my mind with often matching listings, but I believe GetYourGuide is an...

Great for people who travel often and want to connect securely to hotel, airport, or public WiFi and also to set their computer or device to appear as if in their home country for personal and work purposes. Critical for travel in some countries such as China where Google and Facebook are blocked. Pros: Good customer service, reasonable annual price, and feels like a trustworthy VPN service....

It's about time TripAdvisor became (or tried to become) a comprehensive travel planning platform. The new format UI takes getting used to and it took me forever to find the Settings button (hint: it's in the Me tab at the top with a hard to see cog icon depending on your header background image). I had to go there to change my currency which should offer the option of using the currency of the...

Very interesting concept and I can definitely see the value once more comprehensive travel scam data is available. I like the colorful look however I'm not sure that mapping scams down to street level is useful. A scam in Rome (for example) can happen most anywhere. Perhaps better to map down to city/region level then include specific mapped locations in the reportings only. Would love to see...

I was hesitant at first to try another travel search app but I enjoyed my first experience. On first search it recommended a variety of destinations that I didn't think were within budget. It knew to default to Dublin airport based on IP address, however I wish it defaulted to EUR currency to match departure country. Of course there is always a need for more filters like hotel location and...

Tried it out and it's a visually appealing reference map of the world to help gather travel ideas for visa-free (prefer on arrival) travel. I assume the data is accurate but how often is it updated from Wikipedia? It would be incredibly helpful to offer a link to the visa information page for citizens of the source country to destination country as this product is only a source for travel ideas.

The user interface is the fast and slick and super easy to create icon collections, edit icons including colors and name, and download in multiple formats in just a few clicks. Good to see a free version and paid version. What's very confusing are the attribution legal rules. It says Premium (paid) requires no attribution but the fine print says third party icons do require it. They need to...