The only disappointing thing about Oyster’s Photo Fakeouts is that there aren’t more of them — and that this isn’t the dedicated feature of any site we can find. Popular travel planning and review site TripAdvisor allows for user-submitted photo uploads, which are nice, and I’ve sometimes had good luck searching Flickr for the name of hotels, but it’d be great to see something like these Photo Fakeouts in an easily searchable database.
As weblog Of Zen and Computer points out, it’s worth noting that pictures can be manipulated to look bad in much the same way as they can to look good. That said, sometimes the difference is clear and egregious, and it’s nice to get a reality check before you book.
If you’ve got your own methods for searching out the reality of your hotel before you book, let’s hear your tips in the comments.
Photo Fakeouts [Oyster Blog via Of Zen and Computing]
Dean Winter
October 22, 2009 at 1:45 PM
Site was dying with the increased traffic, and has now disappeared :(
Report PermalinkLink now redirects to the main reviews page.
marztar
October 22, 2009 at 3:40 PM
lol occasionally something loads.. but what a joke of a site. It can’t even stay afloat.
Plus the main difference of some of the pics that managed to load is that the Hotels photographer is qualified vs Photo Fakeouts one who can’t figure out exposure white balance and all the other things that make up a good photo.
Though on one of the photos there did look to be a turd floating in the pool so stay away from that one.
Report PermalinkDaniel Willis
October 22, 2009 at 5:24 PM
Were you mauled by an Oyster as a child?
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