Productivity Portfolio

Bank Holidays of the World

As the site’s domain suggests, the site lists bank holidays for more countries than the other sites we reviewed. In many cases, they will break a country down into different sections since local laws may apply.

After choosing your language by way of a flag, you’re greeted with a world map. If there are red flashing markers, you know that area has a holiday. Label 2 shows that Congo is celebrating a holiday today. You can click the area to drill down further.

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The world graphic is useful, but you’ll probably want to find out something more specific such as a country. The site allows you to get at the information in many ways. I could look at the info by country, date, or type of holiday. There are even categories for festivals and elections.

The site offers a wealth of information, but one of its key strengths is the ability to download the information to calendar applications such as Microsoft Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar and so on. This is a handy feature. It worked well for me with European areas such as Great Britain. However, a similar request was not produced for the United States even though the information was online.

Although the content is good, I found the site slow and difficult to navigate. The site does offer a paid service, which allows you to see previous years and as far out as 2050.

http://www.bank-holidays.com/

Q++ Studio International Holidays & Religious Holidays

This was an interesting find, as the site is a software typesetting company for large diary publishers like Filofax. Within the site, they have a section showing world holidays. They don’t offer the full list, but offer details for 240 countries and areas. According to the CEO, they actively monitor 50 news services for last minute changes.

What the site may lack in coverage, it makes up for in ease of use. I found the site easier to access and find information. The main breakdowns are by country, months and religions. The information is also presented in many languages besides English.

If you access by month, you get a chronological listing and which countries have a holiday on that date. You can click the hyperlink for more details. One nit is that on days where many countries are represented such as January 1, you get an exceedingly long list that forces a horizontal scroll bar.

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The site offers sample CSV downloads and RSS feeds. You can choose a daily feed, this week or news and updates.

http://www.qppstudio.net/worldholidays.htm

Good Business Day - Banking Holidays Affecting Financial Markets

One group obsessed with knowing business holidays is financial traders. Their world is concerned with banking holidays,  exchange holidays or shortened trading hours. Depending on their trading portfolio or strategy, it’s common for them to be dealing with multiple exchanges.

This site is part of Copp Clark who is one of the world’s leading publishers of financial trading and settlement calendars. You can tell right away from this site’s home page, business holidays are the focus. A large section of the main screen is allocated to showing that information. On the left navigation panel, you can find key dates by country and city.

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The site excels at providing financial holiday information. The site is free, but they also offer downloadable files in a bundled package.

http://www.goodbusinessday.com/index.aspx

GTS International Calendar

I missed this resource completely in doing my research. It was brought to my attention by Oliver Beltrami of Q++ Studio. The information is provided by GTS Translation who specializes in translation services. This free site uses a simple page where you can immediately see the day’s holidays. You can also search by country and date.

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It also allows you to get updates via RSS or email. You can specify which countries you’re interested in and how often you would like the emails. There is also an option to export information in a CSV file.

They also provide webmasters with a snippet of code so they can add information to their site in an iFrame. A user can click on a link and see more detail about that holiday including dates for three years. This is useful for holidays that don’t fall on the same date each year like many of the lunar-based ones. The code updates automatically.

http://www.gts-translation.com/nationalholidays/default.asp

Although banks may no longer offer the free calendars, at least you have four nice resources to use. You can access them as the need arises to find bank holidays or download a year in advance. Or, if you’re desperate, you can come back to this page and look at the holiday box above.