Via Michelin

Via Michelin is more than just an online map publisher, it is also a very complete travel assistant. Viamichelin is the perfect companion for any traveler, it provides maps and directions for most countries around the world, this web service has one of the most complete route planning tools I have ever seen and used, no matter where you are or where you are going you can always rely on this service to help you get to your next destination.

Via Michelin’s free web mapping service and route planner allows users to prepare their whole trip in advance, you can use it to find hotels, camp sites, residences, B&B’s, holiday rentals, and you can even make reservations right there from the Via Michelin site, you can also rent a car directly from their website, the software will even help you find the best deals so you can save some money when you need to rent cars while you are traveling, the car rental service that Viamichelin.com offers is powered by cartrawler.com, Car Trawler searches over 500 car rental suppliers to find you the cheapest cars.

ViaMichelin Travel is another cool and very complete feature that the site has, you just have to enter your destination and Viamichelin will help you organize the whole trip very quickly, you can make hotel reservations and as mentioned earlier car rental reservations, you can also find tourist attractions, restaurants, weather information, recommended shopping centers, news, the famous MICHELIN tourist routes, cultural information, and a lot more useful stuff. At their Michelin’s travel site you will get detailed information about the places that you are going to visit, they review and rate most places so you will know exactly what you are going to get and you will also know what to expect. Another great feature is the rail & air booking service, Viamichelin’s rail and air booking service is powered by liligo.com, liligo’s service is similar to the service offered by cartrawler.com the only difference is that liligo does not help you find cheap cars for rental, liligo searches hundreds of travel sites to find you the best flight, hotel, and package fares, they compare all the available offers at the best travel sites and they allow you to book from the suppliers directly. Liligo.com is considered by many the ultimate trip planning tool and you can access their services at ViaMichelin.com so you don’t have to be constantly going from one site to another.

Via Michelin driving directions are very accurate, the plotted routes are fun and very easy to follow as well. As you know driving is one of my passions, but driving instructions is not the only feature that you will find at this site because Viamichelin.com does not only offer driving directions, just as Google Maps they offer a very complete routing service, the Via Michelin route planning software provides accurate turn by turn walking directions, car directions, motorbike directions, and bicycle directions. Via Michelin’s route planner also allows you to build routes with multiple stops on it, when you build your routes you can choose the quickest route, the shortest route, the cheapest route, a route for those who love sightseeing, and the Michelin recommended route which is set by default.

Via Michelin is a very complete site that has hundreds of tools and features, it could take me forever to describe this whole website and it would take me even longer to explain how the whole site works, if you want to know more about their services and features I recommend that you visit the official website at Viamichelin.com. Viamichelin just as the other great online mapping services has a very user friendly interface, it’s very easy to understand what you have to do to get directions and maps when you visit the site for the first time, when you visit the site just enter the addresses, the name of the city, or the name of the country where it says “departure” and also where it says “destination”, to add more routes simply click where it says “add a stage”, when you have entered your locations click on the blue button that says “search”, the software will immediately create a highly optimized route that will be displayed in a high quality digital map on your screen, it will even show you the total cost of your trip including tolls and petrol (gas) estimates, you will also have access to other useful and important information like mileage, and travel time.

You can click on the map to modify your route, the map will be enlarged in a pop up window and there you will be able to select map views, locate hotels, restaurants, and much more, you can also print your map directly from there with all the modifications that you have made. The restaurant feature is very cool you can find a restaurant with the type of cuisine that you are looking for, in fact you will be able to find just what you are looking for even if you have a low budget because the software finds for you cheap restaurants, of course best value restaurants are not the only restaurants that you will find, you can also find the best most expensive restaurants, or even charming restaurants.

Via Michelin also offers mobile and GPS solutions but we will talk about them later. Viamichelin.com in my point of view does not have the same high quality maps such as Google maps and Mapquest but the route planning and travel services are unbelievable and any person traveling should definitely use them because it will improve by 100% their travel experience, it will make things much more easier and fast, and as you know time is our most valuable asset when traveling.