Oh help. I need to book a summer holiday for the family (me + wife and 3 year old). I like to think I’m quite plugged into the world of online travel content, but I still find myself stuck in an endless loop of google searches and tripadvisor reviews. So it was cool to find a genuinely useful piece about holidays with babies by William Gray (a long established, excellent travel writer) on the 101 Holidays website. (Disclosure: I know Mark Hodson one of the 101 founders and William too).

There were some useful suggestions and it reminded me of the coolest, bestest family holiday hotel we have stayed at – the Almyra in Paphos. If I could find another place like that, my quest would be over (assuming we could afford it). And I wanted to share that info too – tell a few other people who might be looking just like me for this kind of a holiday! Better still I wrote it up for Takethefamily.com so I could link to my piece on there which would mean no need to write heaps in the comments.

Except there was no comments field on the post. I felt  really cheated!

I tweeted Mark Hodson to ask why. And he replied saying that they didn’t want UGC (user generated content) cluttering up ‘evergreen content’ like this. By evergreen I’m assuming he means content quite closely tied to the product that won’t change much. In real world terms, the shop window rather than the visitor’s book.

This is a classic web conundrum for me. I think web should be all about conversation and discussion and sharing your tips and ideas for great kid-friendly hotels, well that’s bound to be something lots of people would be interesting to take part in.

But does that mean that every page should offer space for readers to comment – or should  there be some spaces that are just about the brand/business setting out their stall?