Wake up.

I do beg your pardon. I was just clicking round Virgin's new travel site when I was overcome by a wave of ennui.

Oh come on.

If there were an award for Most Tedious Site Launch of the Year, then Virgin Travelstore would have it in the bag already. (Incidentally, it's not to be confused with travelstore.com, by the way, which specialises in the sector of business travel.) The front page of the new Virgin site is bland, uninspiring and - remarkably, I must say - actually manages to undersell what the site can provide.

But apparently it offers a "sunshine guarantee".

This may well be true - but only if daily rainfall is approximately 30 times higher than average for three days, which isn't very likely in a Mediterranean resort. Still, if you visit the site in the next few days you'll find some generous discounts on packages from the likes of First Choice and Airtours. The site's chief selling point is that it rounds up other package operators in one place.

Hence the lack of a identity of its own?

Maybe. It doesn't help that some of the resort photos are still being developed. The flight search is unremarkable and the car rentals rely on the Holiday Autos site. However the Travelstore does come into its own when it comes to choosing a package holiday - it's probably the most helpful and systematic booking process yet created, and there is an impressive choice of beach holidays. You start by choosing a region and then specify which aspects of the holiday are most important to you. However, if it is a city break that you are after, then I'm afraid you will have to look elsewhere.