Joobili helps you find events that are taking place when you travel. Joobili’s creators recognized an interesting fact about Europe. For a few days every year, each European city is among the best travel destinations…but the obvious question is WHEN? Joobili aims to answer that question through a simple online application. All you have to do is select a date range for travel and the site will produce a list of events taking place during that period.

To get more from Joobili, it’s important to refine the search criteria. This is easy using a drop down box to select the city, tags or event categories (such as arts or shopping). When we tested it for dates in June, we had 13 events to choose from in different categories.

What’s great about Joobili is that it delivers on its ‘you say when, we say where promise’. We would have liked to have seen a few more events to choose from and would love to drill down deeper than the country level, but as a niche web service, it works well. If you’re planning European travel in the near future, Joobili is certainly worth a try.

Practical Uses:

• Read about the Sechseläuten celebration that takes places each year in Zurich
• Steer clear of heavy traffic and high-priced hotels if you’re considering visiting Prague in the Spring
• Find out where Oktoberfest is held and the best places to stay in the area

Insider Tips:

• Click on a category to refine your search
• Use the map view to find out how close events are to where you will be
• Add your own events to contribute to the community
• Sign up for the site to save your prospective travel plans
• Create a travel wishlist and ‘wentlist’ which you can share with others

What we liked:

• The site has an attractive interface and it’s easy to get started
• There is no need to login in order to use Joobili
• As well as being categorized, events are tagged so you can find them quickly
• We found many interesting events we hadn’t known about

What we didn’t like:

• The site was slow to load at times
• At the moment, the site features only European destinations
• There is no way to refine your search by clicking on a region within a country
• The date slider appears to cover a fixed ten day period; it wasn’t easy to find out how to change this

Alternatives:

• EventGuide – eventguide.com
• MyTickets – www.mytickets.com.au
• What’s On When – www.whatsonwhen.com

Company Info:

• Launched: September 2008
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Budapest, Hungary
• Founded by: Tamas Gabor, Jared Salter
• Web site: joobili.com

Costs:

• Free, supported by advertising

Rating:

• 4 out of 5 (great)