The initial questions of the search facility – which you’ll find on the home page and pages such as
walking holidays in Spain,
cycling holidays in France,
snow holidays in Austria and
journeys in Italy – cover the basics: holiday type, country and dates.
You can specify all three, just one or two, or none at all (in which case pressing ‘search’ will give you the full list of Inntravel holidays). With the date, you can as precise as you like, eg 12 May to 19 May, or, if you just want to search for May, you should enter 01 May to 31 May.
Once you press ‘search’, you’ll be taken to the search results page, where you’ll find the number of holidays found displayed at the top.
It’s at this stage that you can refine your search, by clicking on the four buttons at the top of the page.
You can go through the buttons in any order, but we’ll cover them from left to right…
Clicking on the ‘holiday type’ button on the far left reveals subtypes and levels (if appropriate). You can only choose one holiday type (walking, cycling, snow or journey), but with everything else, you can tick as many boxes as you like. As you make selections, the number of holidays found will update.
Similarly, when you click on the 'destinations' button (second from left) you can select more than one country. For France, Spain and Italy, you have the added option of selecting specific regions – simply click on the '+' icon to view the options.
Under ‘holiday dates and duration’, you can, if you want, specify dates if you haven’t done so already, or modify the ones you entered previously.
As regards duration, ‘less than a week’ is just that: holidays of up to 6 nights. Selecting ‘about a week’ will return holidays of between 6 and 8 nights’ duration, while ‘more than a week’ will find holidays of 8 nights or more.
Finally, the ‘advanced options’ button allows you to specify certain features relating to the scenery, your interests and your accommodation preferences. (There is a different set of features for snow holidays.) The features are not dependent on one another; ticking ‘wine region’ and ‘lakes’, for example, will mean that the results will include both holidays which are in vineyard regions
and holidays which feature lakes, as opposed to only holidays which are in a wine-producing area situated by a lake.
(If you're wondering why there's no wildlife option, that's because you're highly likely to come across wildlife of some kind on any Inntravel holiday. If you'd like some specific suggestions, however, take a look at the
themes within our
inspiration section, which includes
birds,
flowers and more.)
In the right-hand column, there are various options relating to travel. If you wish to fly from the UK, click on the '+' icon and specify one or more departure airport (if you live outside the UK and are flying direct to Europe, you can choose options from the second list). Alternatively, you can search for ‘self-drive’ holidays (on which you take your own car by ferry or Eurotunnel) or holidays which are accessible by rail from London in a day.
For these holidays, you can find the ‘by rail’ prices – and details of the route that we normally recommend – by clicking on the relevant tab in the pricing section of the holiday page.
If you’d like to save holidays as you browse, there are two ways of doing this. On the search results page, you’ll find a heart-shaped icon just above the ‘view details’ button.
If you've clicked through to a holiday page, you’ll find the same heart-shaped icon in the navigation bar that follows you down the page as you scroll.
Whichever one you click, it will turn purple, meaning it’s been saved. If you later change your mind, simply click on the heart again (the centre will turn beige, indicating that it’s been removed from your saved holidays).
You can view your saved holidays from any page on the site – simply click on the heart icon at the very top of the page, to the left of the phone number.
And if you'd like to send your list of holidays to your travelling companion; to Inntravel, so that we can help you narrow down the options further; or simply to yourself so that you can view them on another computer or device, simply click on the 'share saved holidays' button below the last of your saved holidays.
Happy browsing!