How many holidays are available?
Plenty, providing you have at least seven days to spare. The range is a familiar one: sun, flights, villas, skiing, over-50s, Club 18-30 and Lakes and Mountains (the tourist industry's euphemism for land-locked central European destinations), flying from everywhere in Britain. What other kinds of holidays are there?

Is it easy to navigate?
Ridiculously easy: indeed, the determined traveller could probably book in less than five minutes. The main drawback is that price comparisons are difficult. Thomas Cook encourages visitors to search by other criteria and only reveals the full cost further down the line.

How much background information is available?
The amount of detail is substantial, and is sourced from Rough Guides and Thomas Cook's own travel guides, taking care to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. The copious photography and succinct descriptions are a considerable improvement on bucket-shop sites such as bargainholidays.com.

How do I book?
Somewhat strangely, phone bookings can be made at any time, but online bookings (from a secure server) are restricted to office hours - unusual in a medium that vaunts its capacity to be "always on". E-mail comments are encouraged, but a reply isn't guaranteed.

This site is for...
The families who monopolise Thomas Cook branches on Saturdays and, after two hours' deliberation, settle on the resort with the swim-up bar and £40 discount. Cautious last-minute bookers who will pay an extra £200 to see a photo of their hotel and a description of the resort. Older travellers who might otherwise book with Saga but are happy to pay online.