It used to be that when a restaurant found that a restaurant critic was coming or when a hotel found out that a hotel reviewer would be staying they could make an extra effort to give the best possible experience. One of the changes that the Internet has made is that everyone eating at a restaurant and anyone staying at the hotel might be a critic. With the advent of sites like TripAdvisor.com the power that used to be held by the press is now held by the everyday consumer.
Many or most people who write reviews on travel review sites are honestly intending to help the people that will travel after them. They write honest reviews about real experiences. Granted what they think is dirty you may think is acceptable and what they think is wonderful food you may find uninspiring, but an honest review tells you some valuable information when put in the correct context. A thoughtful well written review is of particular value.
But, as Lord Acton once told us, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Stories are starting to come back from hotel and restaurant owners of a darker side of TripAdvisor and other review sites.
We stayed at a wonderful hotel in Santorini called Villa Mathios. Our host was accommodating, gregarious and helpful. He told us stories of guests who he let use his personal computer to check their email. He let them check in before the official check in time. But when they went to leave they asked for a ride to the airport at 6:30 AM. That is not part of the service he provides. He runs a hotel, restaurant and even a travel agency but not a free taxi service. So even though they had had a wonderful stay they threaten to write a bad review of the hotel (and did so when he does not relent).
I love user contributed content, community and social networks. My day job is running online communities for many well known companies. But these sort of dark side of community stories show that there is still value in editorial opinion. There is still value in the opinion of trusted friends or trusted bloggers / podcasters.
As someone who is 6 foot 3 inches tall but too cheap to buy a first or business class airline ticket i was very interested to read an article on GeekAbout.com for The 10 Most Comfortable Airline Economy Seats
Their winner was Virgin America which is consistent with other reports I have heard. My only quibble is that they list United Airlines, but be aware that they are talking about the more expensive economy plus ticket. One of the worst experiences I have had with an airline seat with no leg room was in an economy seat on United from Hawaii to California.
There is a new player in the hotel review space which is TVTrip.com. TVTrip hosts video reviews of hotels. At this time they have “115 destinations, 5530 hotels, 494008 reviews, 4937 videos”. That is a very small percentage of the world’s hotels but the value of actually being able to see the hotel (if they have a review for it) seems of greater value to me than a textual review.
As I get ready for my upcoming trip to London I have been doing my homework and stumbled across this video that is a great overview of the monuments in London that are related to the great London fire.
Starting at Monument and winding along the streets of the city towards Spitalfields, this walk follows the journey of the fire of 1666 through some of the most atmospheric spots in London.
Who thought this was a good idea? Well, you can bet it was not someone with a fear of heights. Dinner in the Sky is part theme park ride and part dining experience. 22 guests, chefs and waiters are raised up by a crane on a specialized platform. The website for this company shows them at Nascar races or at Notre Dame de Paris.
The site says that Dinner in the Sky has been “selected by Forbes.com in its ranking of the 10 most unusual restaurants in the world”. I should think so.
Is it just the camera angle or does this video look like it is about to tip over at times?
The most recent episode of the wonderful “Fly with Me” podcast dealt with people behaving badly on flights. The host of the show Joe Dion, a commercial airline pilot, remarked that when you think about how unnatural a commercial flight is with so many people crammed so close together in a pressurized metal tube 6 miles up it is amazing how usually things go so smoothly, but sometimes they don’t as Joe’s latest podcast describes. I thought of that podcast when I saw this story in the USA Today:
A JetBlue passenger was sentenced to 10 months in prison for threatening the airline’s flight attendants after they stopped serving him alcohol, The Buffalo News reports. The 27-year-old man apparently became “belligerent” with the attendants after they cut him off. He then “made several statements about shooting and killing the crew” once the plane landed, according to The Associated Press. The threats and poor behavior led JetBlue to divert its Houston-to-New York JFK flight to Buffalo, where the man was removed from the plane by the FBI. JetBlue’s crewmembers told authorities they stopped serving the man because he was obviously intoxicated.
Just in case we are unclear about the proper standards of behavior when flying commercially, let’s just say that threatening the crew is not something I am going to recommend.
I have mentioned Kayak.Kayak.com before as one of my favorite sites to use for booking air travel. Kayak sent out a reminder of how to save money booking holiday travel that is worth passing along. If you specify that your dates are flexible (you must create an account to use this feature) you can bring up a graph that will help you pick the best day to fly.
It pays to know what others are paying. After doing a flight search, check the airfare history for a desired route by clicking on Chart View on the flight results page. Kayak’s Best Fare Trend Graph charts pricing for city/date pairs found by Kayak.com users over the past 90 days.
This chart will:
Let you know if the deal you are looking at is a good deal
Let you know if you might get a better deal by moving your trip a few days
Remember back when you used to get a meal on your flight? Heck, remember when you used to get peanuts? Well some airlines on some flights still offer meals and the site AirlineMeals.net documents meals that travelers have been served. The meal above was served, for example, in Business Class on a Continental airline flight. It looks like an improvement over the meals I have gotten in couch. You know the type. “Excuse me miss, did I get the chicken or the fish? I can’t tell”
I booked and paid for a room using Hotwire.com last weekend and then ended up paying for a second hotel room. Why? It turns out that there is a catch with the HotWire service that you should know about.
If you are not familiar with HotWire.com it is a site that sells unsold hotel rooms at a significant discount. It is similar to the better known Priceline.com. With Priceline you bid for what price you are willing to pay (which is a hassle). With HotWire they will tell you what price you can pay for a hotel that is rated a certain number of stars with particular set of amenities. Neither site tells you the name of the hotel before you pay for a pre-payed, non-refundable room. On HotWire you choose a general geographic area, decide if you need the pool at a 3 star hotel or if the 2 star hotel with free internet is what you want.
VeniceHotel.org has a great feature for those traveling to Venice in the very near future. It has a forecast for which days will have the biggest crowds. I assume they are predicting this using bookings at hotels in the area. The only catch is that the forecast only goes out for 21 days. But, for instance, if you are planning on going in the next 3 weeks (which includes carnival) and you wanted to avoid the biggest crowds (did I mention carnival) then they recommend avoiding February 2nd.
Remember back when you used to get a meal on your flight? Heck, remember when you used to get peanuts? Well some airlines on some flights still offer meals and the site 
