A top-20 ranking, recently unveiled by travelrepublic.co.uk, shows that the Villa Cortes Hotel in Tenerife was ranked first with an average rating of 4.87 (out of 5), followed closely by the Corinthia and 2 other hotels at 4.81.

Clients can post a review once they have made a booking and returned home. The site includes over 70,000 hotels and over 165,000 reviews, although only hotels receiving a minimum of 25 reviews were ranked.

“Many congratulations to the 20 hotels… which have clearly delivered an excellent customer experience to Travel Republic customers during 2009. Given that we now have over 70,000 hotels on the website a spot in the top 20 is an amazing achievement,” the site’s managing director Paul Furner said.

More information for hotels in Tenerife are available via http://www.yourtenerife.net/hotels

A review of the wildlife park in the north of the island appeared recently in the UK press:

I first visited Tenerife way before the island was associated with Lineker’s bar, when timeshares were rife and karaoke a new experience. So when I was invited to check out a wildlife park in the relatively chilled north, I was more than happy to go back and see if an authentic experience is still possible at what is often dismissed as just a sun and sand destination.

Loro Parque in the popular Puerto de la Cruz (a town that still has nothing on touristy Playa des Americas) opened in 1972 with just a small collection of parrots. Today it is a zoo, aquarium, theme park and education facility, rivalling some of the best Florida has to offer. Set in 135,000sqm it is also piped as one of the most exciting wildlife sites in Europe.

However, I am here to see their newest addition, a free-flight aviary that is home to an extremely noisy collection of cockatoos, kookaburras, pheasants, thrushes, fruit doves and parrots – very impressive considering its original and rather humble gathering of feathered species back in the 1970s. The 27m-high structure is set in lush tropical vegetation and the network of treetop walks and hanging bridges allows me to encounter some of the 120 tropical birds in their natural habitat. I’m no bird enthusiast but I do appreciate the Spix’s macaw. Originally from Brazil, they have been extinct in the wild since 2000 and are now the rarest birds in the world. A collaboration with Brazil’s wildlife agency has seen the last wild male protected, with funds of £450,000 donated to help preserve the species.

Although I enjoy hanging out with my new squawking feathered friends, they do hit the same volume levels as the Paris Opera House (the park actually measured it) so it was a relief to spend time with the rare white – and reasonably quiet – Bengal tiger. The seven male gorillas, living a truly bachelor lifestyle with their heated bedroom floors, are also worth a visit.

Loro Parque is one of three natural attractions in Tenerife. Siam Park is one of Europe’s newest and biggest water parks. Don’t be put off by the naffly-named rides – the Tower of Power isn’t as bad as it sounds. You will reach up to 40kph on this 28m freefall kamikaze ride just before you enter a clear flume through a shark pool.

To read the full article click here

For a map of Tenerife visit yourtenerife.net

A good article has appeared in the Daily Mail in the UK about the Tenerife of today - and past.

Guanches - tall, strapping shepherds from North Africa - were among the first-ever visitors to the Canary Islands, settling here more than 2,000 years ago, long before the Spanish took control in the early 15th Century.

Situated on arid land in the south of the island, San Blas - which opened last December - was earmarked to become a golf course.

But when a year-long clearance operation uncovered ancient caves and artefacts, it was turned into a nature reserve and hotel instead.

Volcanic eruptions have left the area rich in history rather than flora. The hotel’s multi-media exhibition explains how Guanches and the first Spanish settlers lived, and visitors can ‘meet’ these characters on a guided tour.

You also discover what life was like for the early Spanish settlers. In a documentary, you can watch a fishwife trek from the sea to the mountains, while, in a convincing enactment, tomato growers go about their business near the resort’s man-made lake which is populated by dancing dragonflies and waterfowl.

The hotel is part of Thomas Cook Holidays Sentido range. Sentido is Latin for ’sense’ and 19 hotels run by the tour operator in Europe and Africa are designed around the concept of appealing to all five senses. Each hotel has a signature scent - San Blas has a citrus bergamot smell in its 331 spacious bedrooms.

But the most enticing scent comes from the freshly cooked wreckfish, red mullet and tuna presented at the evening buffet in the airy, circular La Cueva de Atxona restaurant.

The taste element of Sentido Tenerife hotels is based on using local produce and the nightly spread of salads, vegetables and meats sits alongside traditional dishes.

If you feel like venturing a little further, the harbour of Los Abrigos is a five-minute walk from the hotel.

The quayside at Los Abrigos is dotted with seafood restaurants, and you can also watch fishing boats bobbing up and down in the sheltered bay and laughing children jumping off the harbour wall into the sea.

Sound is another sense catered for in Sentido hotels, with chill-out music playing in the bathrooms.

In the evening, the hotel’s Magma Hall hosts bands, while outdoors at the bar plaza there’s comedy, dance lessons, singing and the very popular mini-disco for children.

However, it is still possible to find lots of tranquil areas in the resort, where the only thing you will hear is the occasional owl swooping overhead.

Youngsters are welcomed in the resort - there’s a club where they can learn pottery, make kites or paint. And for adults, there are activities including yoga, tennis, volleyball, climbing and kayaking on the man-made lake.

For the touch element, San Blas has a mini-spa where visitors can enjoy a range of massages, use the sauna or rest weary muscles in a pool filled with water jets.

Eight outdoor infinity pools of various shapes and depths cascade through the resort down to the beachfront - in keeping with the eco-friendly theme, the pools use cleansed seawater. Two of the pools are heated, but year-round sunshine for the Tenerife weather means even the cool pools are a pleasant place to chill out.

It’s not possible to swim from the rocky beach in front of the hotel, though you can take a dip from the nearby beach at Los Abrigos with its black sand.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1222834/Tenerife-A-primitive-past-revealed-modern-resort.html#ixzz0gwwYd8KK

Booking holidays in Tenerife online is becoming more popular as time goes by, and one internet site says:

“High Street Travel Agents such as First Choice who have now joined forces with Thomson Holidays has cut down on the number of Hotels they are offering and instead concentrating more on a select number of hotels which would be easier to fill. Instead of bringing down the prices of holidays for 2010 they have instead increased the prices even though in my opinion they will struggle to sell holidays next at these high rise prices due to the credit crunch and also with the world cup being on.”

The cheapest offerings for Holidays at the present moment are Tenerife if booked separate. With airline prices being low to Tenerife and hotels in Tenerife offering great reductions more and more people are now understanding that they can save hundreds of pounds by booking cheap flights and booking hotels without the need to go to their travel agents.

To read the full article click here

For more information about Tenerife visit http://www.yourtenerife.net

The Independent in the UK ran an interesting travel article recently about visiting Mount Teide - they comment:

It takes just eight minutes for the cable car to speed you to the top of Tenerife’s Mount Teide, the highest mountain on Spanish territory and the world’s third-loftiest volcano. Infinitely more rewarding, though, is to pull on your hiking boots, pack water and sunblock and devote five hours to walking up it. The path, called La Rambleta, starts almost apologetically from a lay-by at kilometre 40 on the road (the TR-21) that crosses the Teide National Park. At an altitude of 2,300m, you are already above the tree line, in the middle of a broad, ancient crater, rimmed by red and ochre walls of rock, out of which thrusts the severe and imposing cone of Teide.

If, like most visitors, you’ve travelled up from the coast, be prepared for the thinness of the air and, in the morning at least, a significant drop in temperature. From November until March the higher slopes are snow-covered, while in late autumn (when I did the walk) the first stretch along an undemanding zig-zagging 4×4 track was decorated with ice-covered bushes, which glinted and sparkled in the low sun. The flora of the volcano is sparse, either very hard-wearing like the retama (a species of broom) or very specialised, like the Teide violet, which has adapted to the harsh conditions by spending much of the year underground, emerging in spring to flower and reproduce.  To read the full story click here

For more information about Tenerife, including a map of Tenerife visit htytp://www.yourtenerife.net

More details about Tenerife can be found on social media from people who have been there recently, including on the new google buzz

Google has introduced its Street View service for Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Majorca.

Brandrepublic report:

LONDON - Dodgy package holiday operators may find it harder to sell their ‘luxurious swimming pools’ and ’state-of-the-art’ jacuzzis, as Google adds popular destinations for British tourists to its Street View service.

Tenerife is known for her great beaches and year round weather, but for those who might want to see a bit of the rural part of the island during their holidays in Tenerife The Independent (who seem to have been doing really good travel articles lately) have written about it, saying:

Aren’t the Canaries better known for their beaches?

Certainly, but the islands also have some strikingly beautiful inland scenery – and more and more visitors are cottoning on. For the energetic, it’s all about enjoying the great outdoors; others just love the idea of sampling a simple, peaceful alternative to the bright lights of the resorts.

Is there much to explore?

Think banana plantations, cacti, dunes and volcanoes. Five out of the seven islands (Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, La Palma, El Hierro and Gran Canaria) are wholly or partly listed as Unesco biosphere reserves in recognition of their remarkable landscapes and unusual flora and fauna.

La Palma, in the thinly populated western Canaries, has such clear skies that it’s one of the best places in the northern hemisphere for stargazing. El Hierro’s unpolluted waters are perfect for scuba diving and La Gomera is topped with glorious, laurel-forested hiking country. Tenerife is dominated by El Teide, the highest mountain on Spanish territory. On both Tenerife and Gran Canaria, plantations share steep slopes with pine forests. On the arid eastern side of the archipelago, the ancient hills and plains of Fuerteventura are scattered with pretty windmills. Its neighbour, Lanzarote, is an artful assemblage of twisted lava dotted with perfect little hamlets.

To read the full aricle click through to The Independent here

For more Tenerife information including hotels, Tenerife villa holidays with companies like  James Villas visit http://www.yourtenerife.net

The Independent in the UK ran a good article about Tenerife recently. Here’s an extract:

The southern shore of Tenerife is a place of constant fascination for me. Certainly, the rocky coastline has been much built-upon. Yet even around Playa de las Americas and the other resorts that cluster together, you can find patches of shore where shoulders of rock shrug off man’s attempts to colonise the island. And another conurbation, Los Cristianos, provides options for escaping the crowds and enjoying the coast from the best perspective: the sea. Frequent fast ferries shuttle between Los Cristianos and San Sebastiá*de la Gomera. In less than an hour, you are transported between the intensively developed shoreline of southern Tenerife and the diminutive main town of La Gomera – virgin territory for many visitors to the Canaries, with virgin forest draped over the hillsides. Even if you delve no deeper than the nearest bar in San Sebastian before hopping on the next sailing back, you will develop an appetite for the archipelago’s shores. And, should dolphins opt to race the boat back to Tenerife, you get an aquatic wildlife experience added on as these mischievous mammals jive in the bow wave.

Way over east, take the opportunity to contrast the shores of the unidentical twin islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. The main resort in the north of the latter, Corralejo, has a certain harsh beauty – and a handy jumbo-sized catamaran waiting to grant you a seaborne perspective. As Fuerteventura retreated, I could properly appreciate the meaning of the word “windswept” – and why, with rocky shores washed by sparkling seas, the island is such a hit with watersports enthusiasts. Ahead, Playa Blanca provided a welcome to an island that still has a secret shoreline: Playa Papagayo, almost deserted when I was there, is protected by a barricade of rock and is hard to reach by road.

The best approach, as the astute yachtsman who drifted into the bay demonstrated, is by sea. Nevertheless, for the land-based shore explorer, Lanzarote’s resorts are compact and artfully arranged around the coast, especially the exquisite Puerto del Carmen – where cafés and restaurants perch on the very edge of the shore, while palm trees trespass on to the fingers of rock that extend towards the ghostly shape of Fuerteventura. You can see where César Manrique, Lanzarote’s late, great artist in residence, found much inspiration. To read the full article click here

For more information about Tenerife, including a Tenerife map visit http://www.yourtenerife.net

Time moves on…

In the eighties video killed the radio star, and as technology has advanced it’s not just industrial businesses that have been affected, but retail too, with shops having to adapt to the new world with on-line offerings as well as trying to maintain High Street positions.

And there can’t be many retail specialists with a physical presence on the UK High Streets that have been more affected by the advent of the internet and new technology more than the travel sector.

A High Street travel agency will typically stock brochures for a multitude of destinations, display late offers in its window, and run a foreign exchange bureau, as well as booking holidays and travel insurance for clients.

But more than this travel agents can give personal advice on most holiday destinations as they recount their own holiday experiences, and in bigger shops most popular destinations would have at least one if not two people working there who have visited where a client is thinking of, and pass on personal knowledge as well as advice on which resorts and hotels might be best.

But now this information, and far more than one or two people can give, is available to anyone thinking of booking a holiday via the internet.

Good or bad, reviews of hotels are available on specialist internet sites where ordinary holidaymakers are free to give unbiased advice on a hotel, the staff, surroundings, and what to expect.

The travel sites with reviews can be really up to date as well, often from people who have just stayed in a hotel, and people thinking of booking a hotel don’t have to rely on advice which however well intentioned could be years out of date, and with several reviews to go on a good overall picture can be built up of how well a hotel is performing, and if looks like it could be suitable before booking a holiday.

Tenerife is a good example of where the internet can win over traditional High Street travel agents. Need a Tenerife map for example to see where attractions and your hotel is on the island. It’s easily found on search engines or on sites like Thomson Holidays and Thomas Cook Holidays.

Want to know what the Tenerife weather is like right now, with a 5, 7 or 10 day forecast? A multitude of internet sites will let you know in an instant.

Everything you want to know about your location is available in seconds, and gives a complete picture of what to expect and what can be planned for your Tenerife holidays.

Is the High Street travel agent needed anymore? As more people get computer literate the less a tradtional travel agent is going to be needed in the future. Today’s children will turn to the internet as a matter of course when they are old enough to book their own holidays - replacing the older generation which has a smaller proportion booking holidays online.

Perhaps the answer is for traditional estate agents to do what Thomas Cook Holidays and Thomson Holidays are doing - keeping a presence on the High Street while also having a good internet site that does everything holidaymakers who use the internet site expect a holidays site to provide.

For more details about Tenerife visit http://www.yourtenerife.net which includes holiday deals, news and travel articles

Los Cristianos Tenerife

A top European holidays destination, Tenerife attracts millions of tourists from Britain, Germany and Scandanavia every year for a week or two’s holiday.

But the island’s tourist authorities believe they could attract more visitors if they could improve her image - especially in Britain - and they are probably right. In the UK a holiday in Tenerife is often seen as a cheap alternative to better places in Europe, and sometimes referred to as the Blackpool of Spain.

But while that might have been true in the eighties and nineties, it’s not true today as the island has spent millions of Euros improving her infrastructure and ensuring tourist facilities are among the best in Europe.

And the island has the benefit of great weather all year round, and while some holiday areas close down for the winter months, Tenerife is in full swing as many people head there because of the good Tenerife weather.

If the island’s image can be improved it will certainly boost visitor numbers as people consider Tenerife holidays instead of their past favourites as a destination to be explored - or when the economy picks up as a winter holiday possibility.

Pensioners taking extended Tenerife holidays wintertime is a boost for the island’s economy, as they spend money on everday essentials during a two or three month stay as well as holiday items, and more would certainly be welcome as the economy starts to gain ground.

But once people decide on a holiday, where should they head for the island - and what can they expect there?

The Tenerife weather is near perfect on the southern half of the island, and the northern half offers lush greenery and beautiful vistas. The towns are full of life, and the glorious view of Mount Tiede, Spain’s highest point, is breathtaking. Tourists who enjoy nature will enjoy a trip to the well known famous Teide National Park, home to Mount Teide. Whether you visit Tenerife in summer or in winter, the park has great landscapes and breathtaking mountain views.

La Laguna is a great city for those who enjoy art and architecture. The cathedral and museum date back to 1515, and there are many churches to explore. The town was once the capital of the island and still bears the regal air of an important place.

Los Gigantes is a city at the foot of massive cliffs which are also named Los Gigantes. The marina offers boat trips for dolphin and whale watching, while the twon centre has a good choice of bars, restaurants and shops.

Los Cristianos is located on the southern coast - a relatively small town, with a resident population of about 12,000 provides tourists a more private, relaxed atmosphere than some of the larger resorts on the island. Its humble beginnings as a fishing village are still evident in some areas.

But for those looking for a sun holiday with a good beach, Tenerife has plenty of blue flag beaches to relax on.

For more details about Tenerife including 2010 holidays visit yourtenerife.net - news, articles plus tour operators with offers on flights and holidays are available.