Research your Travel Destination via Webcams

Whenever I research a future travel destination, one of the first resources I search for online is a webcam, and I’ve been successful for most destinations I’ve visited lately.

While other travellers’ photos can be good resources for learning about a destination, there is nothing like the live streaming of a webcam to tell you what a place is really like.

You may have to spend some time online searching for webcams, but sites such as Camvista and webcams.travel provide maps and links to destinations with cameras, which can help you find the right camera.

Some webcams are of no greater use than a still image and the quality can be a case of hit-and-miss, but cameras such as this Picadilly Circus webcam in London or this one in Rome can give you a real feel of a place.

Hotel webcams can be really useful for travellers to check out the immediate surroundings of a hotel. This hotel webcam in London should put your mind at ease about the immediate environment of the hotel. The webcam of this Palma de Mallorca hotel allows you to check out the vibe of the pool area, before you get there yourself.

I find that many hotels have either yet to catch on to the idea of a webcam or they simply don’t dare showing potential guests what the area is really like. Of course you can always zoom in close in Google Maps or Google Earth to make sure your hotel is not situated right next to a polluting factory.

Before you rush off to search for a webcam at your next travel destination, let me leave you with a link to my absolute favourite webcam at the moment - africam.com, which provides live streaming of African wildlife.

I’ve been watching their brilliant live Nkorho Pan Stream as I’ve been writing this, and so far I’ve seen a jacka, two warthogs, an impala and right now two monkeys drinking from a waterhole. I cannot think of a more inspiring way to make travellers want to visit Africa.

Update - GMT 16:12: oooh a giraffe right now at Nkorho Pan Stream

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