Category Archives: hotels

Landing in Las Vegas

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Despite the Medford to SFO delay that kicked me to the next SFO to LAS flight, here I am in Las Vegas having arrived about 3 hours later than planned. The Best Western Mardi Gras is turning out to be a super value – I paid about 45 per night for a room that’s huge and clean with a big kitchen. The hotel is one of the closest to the Convention Center which I’ll be able to walk to in about 10 minutes and, most importantly, there’s free WIFI that was not even advertised as an amenity. I should put together a WIFI guide to Las Vegas. I think the major strip hotels charge a lot. Last year at the Hilton I think WIFI was an extra 9.95 per day where the Imperial Palace, if I remember right, has a one time 9.95 fee regardless of length of stay.

Tomorrow WebmasterWorld 2006 begins with a Guy Kawasaki Keynote.

When too much is not enough and a little is just right. Google > Yahoo

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Today a very sharp friend said that even though he uses Yahoo mail and some of their default screen navigation, he always uses Google to search. Why? Because Google is not cluttered and makes it very easy to leave Google to visit external sites. Yahoo, especially Yahoo News, he felt, tries to keep the user at Yahoo too aggressively.

A similar point about the ease of navigating to external sites was recently made by Mike Arrington when talking about Web 2.0, noting that it’s important to let folks feel they can easily leave the site for other web locations if you want return visits and credibility.

Relevancy, conspicuously, was not the concern of my friend. He just didn’t like the Yahoo search user experience. I agree and realize that for me it’s the fact that with Google I can get and visually scan *a lot more results* much faster than with normal Yahoo search. Like my friend it’s not the relevancy as much as the navigation that keeps me at Google despite the fact I own Yahoo (well, actually I own about one two-millionth of Yahoo). I don’t trust either engine to give me great results, but I know that I’ll usually find what I need somewhere in the first few pages of sites. Google makes it easier to preview a lot of sites fast.

I have stronger negative feelings about most of the travel sites. Online Travel 1.0 is a nightmarish blend of booking screens, pitches for Hawaii and cruise packages, and tourism sites all trying to convince you they are the only destination both offline and online.

It’s particulary frustrating when sites expect me to learn their navigation and nomenclature just to use their damn site, especially if I’m trying to preview dozens of websites for a trip! Most of the worst offenders are overproduced by expensive print media firms using the pretense they know about “online marketing”. In fact most big firms have about as much web savvy as an inebriated, obnoxious, and arrogant tourist and appear to be designing the sites for …..themselves.

Like most users I’d prefer a Craigslist format so I can easily jump to the information I need rather than wading through popups, pictures, video, and other nonsense when I’m trying to plan a trip. With some exceptions the mantra “just the facts please” would serve online travel promotion better than the foolish extravagances that confuse users and also search engines which struggle to find meaning in garrish flash and pages filled with 100k high resolution photos.

What will Travel sites look like as Web 2.0 shakes out? I’m optimistic that they’ll be much, much better, and hoping to figure out how before it’s obvious to everybody.

SES San Jose – it’s almost like I’m not … here.

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I’m sitting in my San Jose hotel room a few blocks from the Search Engine Strategies conference thinking how much better the information about the conference is … right here on my pc … than at the conference itself.   I’m not knocking SES (yet), just noting that a broadband connection and good website coverage means that even up in my little Oregon town I can “see” the emerging online world as well – in some ways much better – than hanging out in the middle of things here in Silicon Valley.  Microsoft’s MIX06 had more PCs all over the place where SES, like last year, has a long line to check mail unless you want to lug your own pc all over the place.   Also an inconvenience if you want to check up on blogs or conference updates.   The key point?  The virtual 24/7 conference online is rocking, and will only get better over time.

I shouldn’t knock the conference because I’m just an “exhibits only” attendee and SES clearly has emerged as the key search conference.   Also, Danny Sullivan is arguably the sharpest SEO observer in the world and based on comments by some presenters I know he treats his peeps well …

YET …  it sure seems they have the same tired “Our SEO is the best ever” exhibitors and perhaps as many as 60+% of the same presenters show after show, most pretending they are better at or more helpful with PPC and organic optimization results than … a smart high school kid … which is not supported by much evidence I can see, especially on the organic side of SEO.   I do hate to miss Matt Cutts comments and the Eric Schmidt interview but maybe I’ll bump into them at the party at Google tonight.

After going to 3 full Webmasterworld conferences, two SES as exhibits only, and one AD-TECH (where they more-nicely-than-SES allow exhibits people to attend the keynotes which are the best part of that conference), I think Webmasterworld offers the best insights and networking.  One presenter who appeared at both told the WMW crowd he had to dumb down the presentation for SES. Perhaps he says the opposite here, but I think SES, at three times the price, is not even as valuable as a WMW conference for all but a handful of niches such as Vendors, who’ll do better at this venue because they are selling things rather than dispensing quality information.   (Man there are a lot of SEO clueless salespeeps in SEO!)

Of course personal contacts are important, but I know I’ll find some people I know over at the Google Party later this evening.

Mountain View – Mashup Camp Two

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Seems like a double life these days. At 1pm today I was home in Oregon painting our house, and now I’m in Mountain View, CA where the 2 day first of all time “Mashup University” begins tomorrow at the Computer Science Museum. Mashup U is followed on Wednesday and Thursday by Mashup Camp 2, the sequel to Mashup Camp back in February. Doug Gold, David Berlind, and supporters did a fantastic job in February and I’m sure this one will also be a great event.

Hats off *again* to Hotwire.com. I just booked the Homestead Mountain View, a great little studio suite with kitchen, for $47 per night, about half the rack rate. An extra 4.99 got me broadband wireless – for my entire 4 day stay! Sure beats the 10.00+ per day often charged by the fancy hotels.

Airline flight update frustrations..

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I praised Kayak's flight selection service a few posts back, but I'm finding they are listing flights that are not available even after what appear to be many hours of non-availability. However, this does appear to be an American Airlines data problem more than a Kayak one so I'm still bullish on Kayak, but it sure is frustrating to see this note which appears at AA.com:

Check below for errors:

  • The flight you selected is no longer available. Please select another flight or modify your request

Arrgghhhhh!

A detailed study of the many services really is needed. Maybe I'll put that on the list.

UPDATE:  Using Kayak.com which sent me into AA.com booking system I did get an excellent rate MFR to BWI of $384 which appeared cheaper thanat AA.com's rate when I searched there independently of Kayak.  The 384 was over $100 cheaper than Orbitz, Farechase, or TravelNOW.

Kayak vs Sidestep = $200 Savings!

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After gushing over Kayak's great flight search I realized I had not used Sidestep in some time and should give it a try.   In my opinion Sidestep used to really suck, requiring download of software to your browser and in my limited experience did not deliver good rates. 

Now, like Orbitz and Kayak, Sidestep allows easy browser based searching.  However for the 2-3 legged cross country flight I'm currently researching (MFR to BWI), Kayak blows away Sidestep and Orbitz with an American Airlines flight that is a whopping $200 less.  

This could be a quirk due to my rural Oregon location but I'm impressed nonetheless.  I also REALLY like Kayak's intuitive interface and the ease of selecting your previous searches very quickly.    Rates from the big systems are updated three times per day and availability can change even more frequently, so it's a good idea to search using the same criteria several times before you "give up" on a good rate.  Persistence pays in the bookings game and Kayak makes it easier to stay on task. 

Eventually I'll try to do a better more  balanced comparison where I'll pick a bunch of routes and run them on the different consolidation systems to see who wins, but first I'll do a few more of these quickie comparisons such as Kayak vs Yahoo's fairly new offering "FareChase".

Kayak.com shines as airline ticket tool

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My initial experiments with Kayak over a year ago left me unimpressed, but Kayak.com has evolved into one of the best tools for finding cheap flights.  There are several notable features that make it a great way to search for flights when you have some flexibility and want a good price:

* You can select a date range of up to 3 days before and after your departure and return.  Without this feature Orbitz was probably better than Kayak for discount flight seekers, but now that Kayak's got it you are able to get a good fare picture for a range of dates.  

You must sign up for this but all that requires is a 10 second email signup.  A huge hat tip to Kayak's team for recognizing that even requiring a name and address is a barrier to sign ups.  Get all that mundane detail from people later or not at all.

* Also great is Kayak's ability to select different arrival airports with immediate fare updates allows you to fine tune your driving to flying ratios.   Especially helpful when traveling to areas where several major airports may be in close proximity to many final destinations.   BWI, IAD, and PHL for example or SFO, SMF, and OAK in California. 

Travel Tip – Hotel and Airline prices

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Over at WebmasterWorld a member was suggesting that contacting hotels directly leads to the lowest price for a room. Not true. There's no magic bullet site online for cheap rates, you need to surf around and may often find a "consolidator" that is cheaper than the hotel itself. Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Expedia are major consolidators and there are hundreds of smaller ones. In Europe, for example, Venere may find you a cheap room.

Example: Last week I used a small flight consolidator called cheapseats.com to book Delta to Boston and paid about $100 less than the cheapest fare Delta had online at the same time.

This situation is common in travel because pricing is very market driven and surprisingly inconsistent both for flights and hotels.

As a travel publishing guy I know how some of the deals are cut and it's a very sloppy and counter-intuitive process where some consolidators will force properties to sell them blocks of rooms far below rack rate in exchange for a guarantee of selling those rooms. Hotels.com is notoriously unpopular as the top consolidator because they tend to squeeze great deals from properties in exchange for guaranteed volume and lots of bookings. Good for consumer, somewhat hard on profit margin for the properties.

If, at the last minute, the consolidator has a lot of rooms left they may sell them at rates far below what the hotel will charge if you call them. You especially see this in places like Vegas and big cities with Hotels.com. During a November Vegas trip I got the Hilton through (Travelocity I think) for about $55 which I think was under their own website rate, though during a March trip I found the best price for Oriental Palace at their own site – a fantastic $65 nightly for a nice room in the middle of the strip plus some buffets.

All that said I think the hotels are getting smarter and some provide a low price guarantee at their own websites, so you are certainly right that you should check the hotel site as well as other places.