A list of the best travel forums
Travel forums are an essential part of trip planning. While travel guides, both online, in mobile and in paper format give you a lot of content - travel forums keep you updated with live information.
Likewise Other travelers can answer your location specific question and you can participate in a community of like-minded travelers. The only caution is to be sure you are talking to real travel rather than a travel agents in disguise!
Let's find out which travel forums offer what and if they are any good!
Travel forums
Travel forums are listed in alphabetical order: please note that the information provided is about the travel forum section of the site alone and not the complete website.
Over the past 5 years many forums closed up due to difficulty in moderating them - see the above note about travel agents pretending to be travelers.
Closed
BootnsAll: Offered a worldwide forum covering all major continents and countries.
It closed down a number of years ago due to inactivity and
spam.
Cruise Critic: Solely dedicated to the Cruise side of travel the forum is broken into individual company reviews, memberships and meeting up with other cruse lovers.
The forum is a little dated looking but does offer a mass in cruise related questions and answers.
Fodors:
Another popular guide book publisher that's got a popular travel forum covering most of the world. It's worth keeping in mind that it's geared slightly more towards upmarket travel than budget travel.
Nice touches on the Fodors travel forum are Trip Reports and and an easy to read recent posts that's flush with ideas.
Horizons Unlimited: Specializing in overland vehicle travel. Horizons Unlimited's Hubb contains probably the most comprehensive forum in that field. It certainly airs more on the side of dedicated travel than vacation travel.
If it's border crossings, carnet de passage questions or country specific questions the Hubb is the place to be.
Closed
Rough Guides: This major guide book player rebooted its travel forum in 2013
but closed it in 2018 when they started selling their own
tours.
The forum categories are bit hard to find since the reboot but with some tweaks it will hopefully develop into something a little easier to participate in.
Closed
Lonely Planet Thorn Tree: Around since 1996 and closed in 2021. The Thorn Tree was one of largest and most popular of all the Travel Forums. However in 2013 it took a nose dive with a new moderation system in place that's seen the community scatter. In 2016 they revamped their logins which again caused the causual commuinity to turn away to the likes of TripAdvisor. It even became hard to find the login page
Then, in 2021 the ThornTree was abruptly closed down by Lonely Planet, taking with it decades of travel information, people's memories, and friendships. With Lonely Planet now being owned by a marketing company the decline continues.Closed
TravBuddy:
Completly closd in April 2018.
TravelFish: The number one South East Asia travel forum has recently opened its forums to cover most of the world's countries. Well moderated with tactical travel sense you'll find a bevy of information here.
With just about everything on South East Asia you could possibly want to know, the new country listings might just be one of the best places to ask your first travel question.
TravellersPoint: One of the premier community driven travel forums offering worldwide destinations and topics. Travellerspoint is an exceptionally well moderated friendly forum.
Questions are asked and answered from beginners to experts alike. If you are looking for a forum with an emphasis on community this is certainly one to strongly consider.
TripAdvisor:
One of the larger commercial brands in travel offers
worldwide Q & A style forums. There's a serious problem
with fake reviews and answers on TripAdvisor which users
should be aware of.
That said there is a wealth of information on there if you want to read peoples opinions on specific places they've been. Ranging from tourist attractions to hotels.
Closed
VirtualTourist:
Was bought by Trippy in 2017 and the forum closed.
