Sweet Willie

I'm much more interested what activities/dining the traveler actually experienced at their destination, so the above generally makes a very boring trip report IMO. I also don't feel Y is written up enough, the experience between carriers is as great as in C or F.

ranles

I do research for all our trips on sites specific to the area we are traveling. It might start (1) with airlines flying into an airport and out of one near me. Picking an airline that I have points on or one that provides good pricing. This may require some questions on FT about that airline, if I am unfamilar with it (starting with search and reading recent postings). Then I (2) check to see if there are hotels that I might have points I can use, or brands I am willing to pay for. Finally, I (3) bing or google "city name attractions" to see what activities interest us that are available. This third step helps suggest the time we will spend on the trip (we are retired).

I read trip reports to gather information over a broad range of "items" aimed at a particular area or destination. With the data outlined, the activities chosen, and the length of stay chosen, I start looking for the missing. These thing I often will pose of the appropriate board in FT.

I write trip reports trying to provide similar destination information as to specific options chosen for flights, lodging, dining, attractions. I try to be more detailed where the information maybe a bit off average, leaving the reader to assume average, elsewise. I also try to post summary of harder to find data. Without "post overload", I also will answer questions that I posed on FT, that were not answered, but I subsequently found out. This gives the "record" a completeness for those "searching" later. I also post if there is a mixed review, giving my recent experience.

My reports are long, but I do try to make them easy to scan. My wife handles all the pictures. They are posted to a site that allows a "slide show" format. They are posted in order of our trip, match the order of my write up and have captions. Either the write up or the pictures can be viewed independently, based on what "you" are looking for.

Most of our trips are 3 weeks or so, and are not very business travel oriented. When we were doing our business travel, we answered question posed on specific airlines, hotels, dining options, clubs and frequent point generation, but did not do trip reports.

A few of our TRs can be found by searching "ranles". Only some of them come up, so I guess that the rest are archived or ?

In sumary, TR posting is all about what the poster does, and what that person wants to share. I try to inform, others amuse while many have other motivations or goals.

Our typical trip requires 250 hours of prework and about 1/2 that amount of time to organize, write-up, sort, improve, select, title and post. Driving trips with multiple states, hotels, etc. take more. I hope that time serves others well.

CMK10

I would just like to remind people that paragraphs with carriage returns (a blank line between paragraphs) are much easier to read.

Example:

(Paragraph 1)

(Paragraph 2)

jyang

I wish to have the report and share with others

HIDDY

I have to say with no disrespect for the posters who are guilty of doing it....

I am not a fan of trip reports being posted well in advance of the trip actually starting. Personally I tend to lose interest in them before they have even started.

I think it would be a good idea if this practice was officially frowned upon.....lets not make trip reports become like the lead up to the release of a blockbuster movie.

baggageinhall

I wholly agree. Other personal peeves:

i. Posting multi-part reports with huge gaps between posts. Why not wait until you have finished and post it in one go allowing me to decide the speed at which I wish to read it

ii. Starting a multi-part report and not finishing it

iii. A three paragraph report that tells the reader nothing about that particular trip

iv. My biggest annoyance is the lack of a master thread with links to all the reports by airline. The search function (including an advanced Google search) just isn't good enough.

LarkSFO

Where else on earth would you read this statement and think it completely normal?

CMK10

This is just me, but I don't like when I start reading a trip report and the first paragraph is a recap of other reports by the author. I don't mind a link at the end of the trip report, or in the signature of the poster, but at the front it seems like a shameless plug.

baggageinhall

I'm guilty of that, but wouldn't be just as shameless a plug to put the links at the end?

CMK10

I feel no. If I get to the end of a report that I really liked, I'm far more likely to want to read more. But at the beginning, how do I know if I'm going to be interested in other works by the author if it's the first time I'm reading them?

Kind of like how at the end of some novels are excerpts from their other books. It would be really odd to have those at the beginning.

PK777

Fantastic advice! I have been a long time reader of Trip Reports on here and many other sites. I took photographs over the years, collected items and wrote reports as a hobby.

I soon found websites such as FT that loved to hear/read about other travellers and today I submitted my first trip report (dated back to 2003!!!) I have quite a few written so will as time goes on include them in this section!

baggageinhall

That's an entirely fair point. I will be publishing a TR in early December and will move the links to the end.

Moomba

My current report is going to have a six month hiatus in it.
Are you saying you would have preferred me not to post anything until next April? You would prefer to read a report for flights that were over six months ago just so you could read the whole thing in one go?

baggageinhall

I admit I should have been clearer in my point above. There is clearly a difference between a RTW or long multi-part trip that takes place over a long period of time than a person who takes 3-4 flights over a short period of time in a single return trip.

In your case, six months is clearly too long to wait between posts. Where the latter is concerned, the flights are posted over a few days which I find a little frustrating.

To refine my point then, if you can post the entire trip in one go rather than over a few days, I'd rather you did that. If you are in the middle of a long trip then of course it's sensible to do so in parts.

PS: Back in F for this new report? What's your route this time?

CMK10

Please resize your pictures before posting. When they're so big you can't see the whole picture without scrolling and so wide they stretch the text so it can't be read without scrolling right to left, it detracts from the enjoyment of your report.