hotels

Photo Fakeout Hotel Reviews Compare Promo Images To Reality

11:00AM Adam Pash | Online hotel review service Oyster features a Photo Fakeout category in their blog that gives a reality check to hotel reviews, pitting a hotel’s promotional images with actual photographs. More »

Where Guests Hide Stuff In Hotel Rooms

1:00PM Angus Kidman | Even when a hotel room has been cleaned, stuff often gets left behind. If you’re looking for hidden treasures, a senior hotel executive suggests checking the bathroom, the bed, and the in-room Bible. More »

AirBnB Finds A Place To Stay On The Cheap

10:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Looking to see the sights but not looking forward to paying high hotel prices? Take advantage of AirBnB to find some nice, usually economical, local accommodations. More »

Hand Luggage Only: The Small Lessons Learned

1:30PM Angus Kidman | There were some big lessons to be learned from the Hand Luggage Only project, but there were also some smaller gems as well. Here’s 20 useful travel nuggets for the active road worrier. More »

Nextstop Offers Travel, Food And Local Activity Reviews And Guides

3:30AM Azadeh Ensha | Latest entry in the local guides field: Nextstop, which lets users create their own local or global guides—think best beer bars in the world, for example. More »

iStopOver Locates Rooms For Rent

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’re comfortable staying at a stranger’s home while travelling, iStopOver is a service that connects travelers with locals renting rooms—at rates well below local hotels. The service functions much like a hotel search engine, you enter the city and the dates you’ll be visiting that city and iStopOver returns the available rooms for rent. You can check out pictures of the location, see it on a Google Maps mashup, the available price, and if the room has been rented consistently even see ratings from previous visitors. Everything is handled by iStopOver, including the transfer of money between parties. When you arrive at your selected location you give the owner a code which they use to tell iStopOver that you’ve arrived. If things aren’t like they promised you can leave without ever “checking in” and iStopOver will refund your money.Perusing the listings in New York yields a surprising bounty of really nice accommodations for prices radically better than any hotel would charge for the same accommodations. The site will list prices in Australian dollars, but there weren’t any Australian listings when we checked. Is it worth the savings to stay in a stranger’s home? Sound off in the comment below with your opinion. iStopOver [via Mashable] More »

Hotel Prices Are Falling Online, But Catches Still Abound

2:00PM Angus Kidman | The credit crunch might be doing nasty things to your job prospects, but it has one potential upside for travellers: hotel room prices are falling across the globe. However, last-minute discount deals won’t always represent the best value. More »