A TripKick to the Bathroom

She got a TV eye on me - Iggy Pop

Couple of things caught my attention on the web the past couple days.

1. TripKick Hotel Rooms website

The basic idea is the website tells you the difference in rooms in a hotel by factors such as view, noise, size, corner room, great bathroom.

Great concept and these are the primary features in hotel room detail that I consider when staying some place. These are the main factors, although I also want to know about other variables like:
-- refrigerator situation (full or empty, regular fridge with mini bar selection or electronic fridge where moving an object gets a computerized charge to your hotel folio),
-- seating (couch, one chair, two chairs, combination),
-- TV placement and size,
-- internet free or what cost,
-- specific bathroom setup in regard to spa tub, shower, or both as separate units,
-- window situation (open all the way, part-way, no way).

The hotel industry makes a site like TripKick a difficult proposition to carry out. Websites like SeatGuru have a relatively small variation on the types of aircraft flown around the world, whereas, there are thousands of variations of hotel room layouts and there are generally dozens of room types in each large hotel just based on the simple five variables View, Noise, Size, Corner Room, Great Bathroom.

The database of information necessary to make the project work is mindboggling. The concept is a great idea. The issue I see keeping the website from developing is the limitation of hotel data. I see many websites soliciting hotel reviews, but there are few sites even approaching the database of TripAdvisor. I regularly find hotels where hundreds or even thousands of guests have stayed over the past few months and the most recent review on TripAdvisor is six months to a year old. And what other hotel review site can even approach the number of reviews available on TripAdvisor?

TripKick is a great concept and I wish them the best of luck with the venture. And if it does take off, I am sure Expedia will be there with the incentives to put TripKick in the shade of their travel umbrella.


Call Waiting?

I like Glenn Haussman's article on hotel bathrooms featured on Hotel Interactive.com. Thinking back on it, I don't think I have ever picked up a bathroom phone. The phone next to the toilet seems oddly out of place to me too.

Reviewing the Reviewers - a TripAdvisor Analysis

I like TripAdvisor. Where else can I find hundreds of reviews of a hotel in one place with a popularity ranking system?

The more I use TripAdvisor, the more frequently I notice some limitations of the service. Two issues have arisen over the past couple of weeks as I have spent several hours working with TripAdvisor hotel review webpages.

Firstly, I have issue with the geographical specificity of the hotel popularity ranking system used to show the order of listings according to a TripAdvisor proprietary algorithm - the TripAdvisor "secret sauce".

A tourist often does not have detailed knowledge of a place. Here is the issue I ran into with studying Phoenix/Scottsdale hotels. I planned a trip to go to a meeting in Phoenix two weeks ago. I simply wanted to stay in hotels in the Phoenix area for a couple of additional nights, however, a hotel near Phoenix was also in consideration since I could drive to any location in the Phoenix area in my car.

TripAdvisor categorizes hotels by the specific city. Phoenix hotels are one database of hotels provided in TripAdvisor's own popularity ranking. Scottsdale hotels are a different exclusive ranking. Glendale, Chandler, Mesa, and Tempe are each additional ranked hotel popularity databases.

Sometimes there is an additional regional header besides the state, but not always.

Here are examples to illustrate the point.

My previous post was a trip report about The Wigwam Golf and Spa Resort in Litchfield Park, Arizona. The Wigwam is the only hotel in Litchfield Park, Arizona, a suburb in western Phoenix metropolitan area. TripAdvisor ranks The Wigwam #1 most popular hotel in Litchfield Park, a city with 1 hotel.

What good does that do in helping me decide how The Wigwam ranks among metropolitan Phoenix hotels?

The good news is TripAdvisor sub-categorizes Arizona (and each state) with some regional category groupings. Arizona has a sub-category for "Central Arizona" which combines the hotel listings for Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler, and a variety of other towns and cities.

The interesting omission to me is Litchfield Park is not included in the Central Arizona database and therefore The Wigwam Resort has no comparative popularity ranking for Phoenix metropolitan resorts in the TripAdvisor search results.

Closer to home I noticed another odd thing about TripAdvisor.

For Carmel Hotel listings I can search for Carmel and the TripAdvisor geographical hierarchy for hotel search returns is based on:

Carmel/Monterey Peninsula/California

If I search Carmel hotels, I will only see hotel listings for Carmel, except for a few Carmel Valley properties and a couple of Carmel Highlands properties if I search "Carmel" on TripAdvisor.

If I search Monterey Peninsula, I will expand the hotel database and see TripAdvisor's popularity rankings for hotel listings in Carmel, Pebble Beach, Pacific Grove, and Monterey.

The TripAdvisor display for Carmel lodging looks like this:

#1 in Carmel of 18 - Tickle Pink Inn (this hotel is actually 5 miles south of Carmel in Carmel Highlands)

#2 in Carmel of 18 - Quail Lodge Resort and Gold Club (while technically a Carmel address, this resort is located on the Carmel Valley Road several miles east of the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea and would be referred to locally as a Carmel Valley location.)

#3 in Carmel of 18 - Lobos Lodge (actually in the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea)

The TripAdvisor display for Monterey Peninsula lodging looks like this:

#1 Tickle Pink Inn (#1 of 18 Carmel)

#2 Casa Palmero - Pebble Beach (#1 of 3 Pebble Beach)

#3 Quail Lodge (#2 of 18 Carmel)

#4 Best Western De Anza Inn (#1 of 62 Monterey)

#5 Lobos Lodge (#3 of 18 Carmel)

#6 Comfort Inn Monterey Peninsula Airport (#2 of 62 Monterey)

Looking at the first list for Carmel returns a variety of lodging options from a golf resort at Quail Lodge in the Valley, to an oceanfront hotel in the Carmel Highlands with some of the most incredible views of California coastline in the state, to a little place in downtown Carmel for all the features of dining, arts, and the beach in a central Carmel location. These are all fine accommodations reflecting the type of activities available in and around Carmel.

The Monterey Peninsula hotel search returns are all over the place. I still have the three Carmel options in the Top 6, so looking at the other three listings:

Casa Palmero is luxury on a money scale. A night here will likely run $1,000 for a room that won't have an ocean view. The Pebble Beach golf course is all around and there are dining options and such, but the clientele for Casa Palmero is a jet-setter that will unlikely ever consider the Best Western de Anza on Fremont Street.

The #1 ranked hotel for Monterey is near the Monterey County Fairgrounds, a Denny's restaurant, a Long's drugstore, and a pornography shop, but not much else of tourist interest. The features of Cannery Row and Fisherman's Wharf are about 3 miles away.

The Comfort Inn Airport is fine if you have a 6am flight out of Monterey, but not much to do in that area without driving to some other place.

The hotel search returns are an odd mix when the secret sauce of TripAdvisor popularity ranking sorts the regional results.

Down by the Seaside, See the boats go sailin'

Another problem I saw for this area is the City of Seaside has Hilton's Embassy Suites and a Holiday Inn Express and these hotels are not listed in the Monterey Peninsula options because Seaside is not considered in TripAdvisor's category for Monterey Peninsula. Seaside may not be the dearest place on the Monterey Peninsula, but by anyone local, the inclusion of Seaside in the Monterey Peninsula is a given. The Embassy Suites is across the street from Monterey's city limits and the hotel beach facing view rooms have one of the best views of the Monterey Peninsula.

What is TripAdvisor's definition of a B&B/ Inn?

My second issue with the popularity rankings is the separation of lodging into hotels and B&B/Inns. For Carmel-by-the-Sea, there are only 18 hotel listings and 36 B&B/Inn listings.

As a tourist my perception of a B&B/Inn is what I would experience when staying in a nice Victorian house with beautiful furnishings and a friendly country charm on the coast of Maine. Pacific Grove has B&B accomodations like that. Carmel has a bunch of motels that have been upgraded every few years for the past 60 years and the buildings are motel quality, but generally with a little extra style in the rooms.

Most of us would call a large number of the B&B/Inn properties listed among the 36 TripAdvisor popularity ranked lodgings "motels". The location in central Carmel, near the beach, does not necessarily make a motor inn motel with a parking lot correlate to a special B&B/Inn.

Here is my argument presented in photos:

I just have a hard time rationalizing the inclusion of the Clarion Carmel Oaks property with B&B/Inns and not hotels.

Clarion Collection's Carmel Oaks Inn and Suites, AAA 2-diamond property listed in TripAdvisor's B&B/Inns category.

Small windows look out to the street. Balconies on second floor rooms.

The parking lot/courtyard to the Clarion Carmel Inn. The Inn's Office is the door with the window.

Carriage House Inn, AAA 4-diamond property

Carports are unusual for a 4-Diamond Inn, but the room interiors are what one might expect in a nice inn. Large tubs, marble tile, window seats, and 42 inch wall mounted HDTV are some of the features in rooms at Carmel's Carriage House Inn.

TripAdvisor has a substantial database of hotel reviews, but the algorithms used for hotel searches still needs more tweaking to better serve the traveler with relevant and more comprehensive results and comparisons.

The Write Stuff, For Free?

street artist work in Victoria, British Columbia (August 2007)




"Now me I play for fortunes
And those velvet curtain calls
I've got a black limousine
And two gentlemen
Escorting me to the halls

And I play if you have the money
Or if you're a friend to me
But the one man band
By the quick lunch stand
He was playing real good, for free"

Joni Mitchell, "For Free" 1970

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/joni-mitchell/for-free.html



This past week I have been thinking about travel guides, online and offline.

Social project travel media through online websites like FlyerTalk, WikiTravel, TripAdvisor, TravelPod, World 66, lastminute.com, etc. provide readers with an abundance of travel information. Data-mining of Travel 2.0 websites is the frontier of online travel media consolidation, in my opinion.


I looked at articles this past week about Monterey on WikiTravel and TripAdvisor and felt the desire to edit away, but then I came back to the reality of needing to write for my own profit and not spend too much time writing for some company making internet advertising revenue on my work. I am all for social media and free travel information on the internet, but I am also trying to carve out a niche for sustainable employment in the world of travel writing. Social media travel writing changed from a hobby to my job and I need some compensation for the work I create everyday. I contribute to several of these social media projects, but I also find myself holding back to keep control of my major pieces of work. It is a paradox I haven't resolved.


The Lonely Planet scandal has created plenty of commentary from travel writers. The recently published book by a former Lonely Planet travel writer has sparked controversy about the value of travel guides in current times when so much information is available for free over the internet. It is no wonder that travel writers can develop material from the comfort of their own homes about places on the other side of the globe that can result in the kind of travel writing fraud that has hit Lonely Planet Guides this week.


And I wonder about the capitalism behind the social forum websites. Thomas Kohnstamm complained Lonely Planet expected work on an inadequate shoestring budget. WikiTravel and TripAdvisor generate content that is edited and repackaged for profit and these sites don’t pay their online writers anything at all. Where does this leave the future of travel writing and travel writer employment?



I have a masters degree in Labor Studies, but ironically the internet took off the year after I finished graduate school in 1994 and the internet has been the primary factor in globalization and worker displacement in the US labor force since that time. It is a brave new world and employment conditions have been profoundly affected by these electronic developments. Travel writing is a different occupation now than it was in the 90s.


One recurring comment among travel writers and travel readers is the value of one person’s opinion compared to dozens of people’s opinions. How do you evaluate a hotel when 20 comments on TripAdvisor are positive and 10 comments are negative? Travel writing based on data mining of the social forums on the web will have to reconcile these differing opinions and the derivative works will primarily be editorial work.


Economics of travel is my primary writing topic. I don’t consider myself to be a traditional travel writer. My pursuit is travel analysis. You know where you want to go and I know ways to book upscale hotels for less around the globe.

My role is similar to a radio dj, albeit a public broadcasting station since I program my own content. If you like the tunes I spin in my travel writing, then my work has value. And if you are not into corporate hotels and don’t mind living in the houses of strangers with B&Bs and room rentals, then there are probably better ways than hotel living to spend your money and make it go further when traveling.


The B&B lodging option was something I tried for 8 weeks in Ireland back in 97-98 and that was a memorable and pleasurable experience. Sitting at the kitchen table at midnight in the house of a Catholic woman in Buncrana, County Donegal, as her policeman husband was involved in quelling the rioting associated with the Protestant Marching Season around Derry was the kind of personal experience a traveler will be unlikely to have in a major hotel. And the economics of spending $120 night compared to $50/night for a B&B was a bad value for us as travelers in 1997. (I haven’t looked at Irish B&B prices in years and the rates I listed here were the norm back in 1998).


The security and independence of hotel living is a travel privilege I have come to enjoy over the past ten years and I find good and affordable (for me) value in traveling with upscale hotel stays and the benefits of loyalty programs.