Category Archives: tourism

Most Dangerous Cities in America along with the safest

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CNN reports results from a recent study of crime in American cities, noting these as the most dangerous and safest ten USA Cities in each category:

Ranked Most Dangerous

1. Detroit, Michigan
2. St. Louis, Missouri
3. Flint, Michigan
4. Oakland, California
5. Camden, New Jersey
6. Birmingham, Alabama
7. North Charleston, South Carolina
8. Memphis, Tennessee
9. Richmond, California
10. Cleveland, Ohio

Ranked Safest
1. Mission Viejo, California
2. Clarkstown, New York
3. Brick Township, New Jersey
4. Amherst, New York
5. Sugar Land, Texas
6. Colonie, New York
7. Thousand Oaks, California
8. Newton, Massachusetts
9. Toms River Township, N.J.
10. Lake Forest, California

Since the results are the result of weighted crime stats it’s true you might come to different conclusions about safe and dangerous, and of course safety and danger are not just a function of crime.   I think I’d take a slight crime boost if it meant a big reduction in dirtiness and pollution, though usually most of the bad stuff goes together.    I was amazed at how Philadelphia was so much nastier in terms of downtown cleanliness than the Amish country around Lancaster, PA and I’m always surprised in San Jose and Silicon Valley how much dirtier and harsher the cityscape is compared to the nearby suburbs, which are generally “too tidy” for me.    Here in rural Oregon you kind of feel cozy when you see dozens of dirty lawn flamingos in the yard and 14 used cars in somebody’s driveway.

CNN Reports

Las Vegas – Frontier Hotel Demolition Video

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This just in from the “only in Las Vegas” department.  

The New Frontier Hotel near the north end of the Las Vegas Strip   is demolished in a huge explosion preceded by a great fireworks display that mimics the pending destruction.   I think I have this right that the Frontier was the *last remaining* big hotel casinos from the second big surge of activity on the Las Vegas Strip.   First there were the original “rat pack” hotels like the original Tropicana  and original Frontier.    These were gradually replaced by hotels like the Sands, and New Frontier  (but not the current Tropicana?   I was there less than a year ago for Bodies – The Exhibition so I’m sure it’s still standing, but the current one must be a third generation Tropicana.   These in turn have been “replaced” – though not by destruction – by the mega hotels like MGM, Caesar’s Palace, the Mirage, TI, The Venetian, The Wynn, and the Bellagio.

Oregon Retirement

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Wow, I’m doing some research for an Oregon retirement website and just learned that according to  recent survey  the   2004 book called “Retirement Places Rated” out of hundreds of retirement areas in the USA two of the top ten places to retire in the USA are right in my back yard – one of them actually includes my back yard because it’s the Medford / Ashland area here in Southern Oregon. The other is Florence, Oregon – number one in the survey of over 300 places. I travel there often and personally prefer this area due to much better weather and our abundant big-city amenities in a small city, but Florence Oregon is a really nice place too and it’s the home of Oregon Coast Magazine and our Online Highways websites including this great Oregon Travel section in case you are planning a trip to Oregon. Our Travel Blog is here and I’ve posted a few good Oregon travel references as a warmup to the big blog I’m starting this month that will cover the entire state of Oregon. More on that later.

Locals call this the “Rogue Valley” and historically our wonderful region does very well in national “best places to retire” and “best places to live” surveys. I’ve lived in the East, Midwest, several California cities, and here in the Rogue Valley and it’s hard to imagine a better place to raise a family or retire. The houses are relatively expensive and the economics for a wage earner are the most challenging aspect here which may be why the population remains modest, though growth in some of our areas has been dramatic.

Tennis at the Burj-al-Arab?

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Burj-al-Arab

This is one of those real things that at first seems too amazing to believe until you do a little research to confirm that it is in fact a real Tennis Court – the highest in the world.  The Burj-al-Arab is one of the world’s most luxurious and spectacular hotels.   Rooms are $2000 per night unless you opt for a top suite where you can expect to pay some $28,000 per night.

The helipad at the top of the hotel was turned into a tennis court for Andre Agassi and Roger Federer when they were visiting for the Dubai Open.    Amazing.

Hotel Pictures

Burj-al-Arab website

Online advertising juggernaut rolls on.

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This Internet Advertising Bureau report notes that online advertising is still showing explosive growth.    Interesting is the fact that the types of online advertising – with search ads at the top – seems to have stabilized somewhat with “pay for performance” one of the few categories that has clearly increased from last year.   

 I don’t think this stability reflects the “optimal” mix of ads, rather it is more an indication of how the big players take some time to get comfortable with innovations in advertising, and still stick to more traditional CPM style approaches rather than the clearly superior PPC and pay per performance models.   Clearly even many of the big advertisers and agencies still have fairly weak SEM and SEO departments so they’ll choose to use big CPM campaigns that are easy to analyze rather than the more productive – but more complicated to manage – PPC and performance approaches.

Online ads are now a mainstay of any good campaign, but it’ll take some years before advertisers realize the foolishness of many online advertising approaches which generally include bloated CPM impression campaigns.   Much more effective are targeted organic and PPC ad campaigns, but these require more analysis and a newer perspective.

The most conspicuously stupid type of campaign – still extremely popular in travel – is to use expensive print advertising in an attempt to boost online visitation.  I studied this *extensively* across many print ad types during my work marketing southern Oregon several years ago and despite the clear results that showed print ads lead to only a tiny number of online visits, many travel marketers still think print is an effective way to promote online.    It’s not, but it will continue until the incentives and simplicity of squandering money on ineffective print advertising go away.   The lack of research in this area is odd to me given the huge total travel advertising spend, but most travel research is self-serving and often sponsored or conducted by the very agencies or entities that benefit from certain results, so stupid biases remain intact for a long time.

Halo 3 and the statue of the 3 lies

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Speaking of Boston MA as I (ummm … sort of) did yesterday, MIT students have pulled a great prank on Harvard by decorating the famous statue in Harvard Yard as a Halo 3 fighter.

The “John Harvard” statue may now get nicknamed “Statue of the FOUR mistakes”. Ironically the statue has three big mistakes as it sits in the hallowed yard of Harvard University, that bastion of intellectual achievement.

Also called sometimes “The statue of the three lies”, the mistakes are:

The statue isn’t really John Harvard. It was commissioned after his death and he had no known portraits so a student sat for the artist.

John Harvard was not the founder of Harvard. It’s named after him, founded by Mass. legislature.

Statue has the wrong date for the founding of Harvard. 1636 is correct, statue shows 1638.

Las Cruces

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So, the Las Cruces question today relates to whether Google’s “SERPs”, or Search Engine Results Pages, give good quality results for the Query “Las Cruces”.    This post is also part of the nmohwy SEO experiment.    To determine this we’ll take the top page of results and look at each one of them.   In SEO terms this is called “scraping” a page and is usually considered bad form and even illegal in some circumstances if you do it over a large number of pages to create a new website, but in this case the scraping action has good legitimate use, especially because it’ll help me determine the most appropriate content for the Las Cruces web page at NMohwy.com.   “Most appropriate content” has become a very interesting concept as Google’s search dominance continues.   Without a high Google ranking it is very hard to get much traffic to a website so “pleasing Google” has become almost a necessary condition for the online success of a website.    Yet as Peter Norvig, head of Google search recently noted at a conference there is a huge give and take going on between Google and SEOs that is reshaping the Google results and therefore reshaping the web.   This was an inevitability of Google dominance but I think it’s a very undesirable outcome that is devaluing many of the things the web once valued highly (especially some type of very functional linking relationships that are now seen as “spamming”).

That said, it appears  Google has done a very good job for the query “Las Cruces” with one glaring exception among the top 10 sites.   I’ll discuss each below:

City of Las Cruces – Home

Home page for the beautiful city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Rated as the best place to retire.
www.las–cruces.org/ – 35k – Cached – Similar pages This, Las Cruces’ official city page, makes sense as the top choice for the query “Las Cruces”.   With a simple query of the form  “city”, it’s not clear if somebody wants Las Cruces Travel Info, City info, news, real estate, etc.   However with most city queries I have reviewed Google tends to go with the official city page first, then the official visitor page second or third.   This is intuitively consistent with what I’d think a user would want from that simple query.

Las Cruces, New Mexico Convention & Visitors Bureau

Official Web Site of the Las Cruces Convention & Visitors Bureau.
www.lascrucescvb.org/ – 68k – Cached – Similar pagesAs noted before this is a logical second page – Visitor Bureaus are usually key point of visitor contact  (smaller cities generally don’t have this function or have it wrapped up as part of the Chamber of Commerce)

Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce Home Page

The chamber of commerce is a not-for-profit organization and is owned and operated by local business leaders who work to promote business growth in the …
www.lascruces.org/ – 25k – Cached – Similar pagesAgain, a logical third choice for Las Cruces NM.     Chambers offer businesses in the region and also will have much visitor and relocation information.

Las Cruces, New Mexico – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Las Cruces is a city in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 74267. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Cruces,_New_Mexico – 89k – Cached – Similar pagesGoogle *loves* Wikipedia.   This is partly for good reason as Wikipedia often has excellent features for many cites as well as millions of other topics.   Recently a university study of Britannica and Wikipedia concluded that the errors in each of these online resources were roughly equivalent, suggesting that Wikipedia, with it’s much greateer number of articles, is actually a more authoritative resource than Britannica.

Las Cruces Sun-News – HOME

Daily news, opinion, sports, arts, entertainment, lifestyle and classifieds.
http://www.lcsun-news.com/ – 105k – Cached – Similar pages

Local Las Cruces news also appears to be an excellent site to rank highly.

Las Cruces NM New Mexico

Las Cruces New Mexico Travel, Restaurants, History, and Relocation.
las–cruces.com/ – 24k – Cached – Similar pages

Las Cruces, New Mexico (NM) Detailed Profile – relocation, real …

Recent posts about Las Cruces, New Mexico on our local forum with over 100000 registered users. Las Cruces is mentioned 1128 times on our forum: …
http://www.city-data.com/city/Las–Cruces-New-Mexico.html – 120k – Cached – Similar pages

City Data is a good site that has created a huge mashup of many public domain data source, images they collect from users, and has a fairly large user forum.  This is their key Las Cruces page and probably a good choice though there are many resources that offer similar information, though I think City Data does a good job of pulling them all together in an unattractive but very usable form. 

New Mexico State University

Located in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
http://www.nmsu.edu/ – 18k – Cached – Similar pages

This result should probably appear higher because Universities are a key part of the community and also a key search destination for many.  However NM State Las Cruces appears to have failed to do (any?) SEO work with the site to let Google know wazzup, thus Google winds up placing them lower than otherwise.

WEBLIFEPRO.COM

http://www.weblifepro.com/lascruces/ – 1k – Cached – Similar pages

This is the only clearly bogus result.   The page is down so this must have been some sort of marketing effort gone bad, perhaps due to manipulative SEO practices.

Las Cruces Public School District

Las Cruces, New Mexico’s Public School District. Calendars of events, board policies. Information on schools, employment, district news, assessment, …
http://www.lcps.k12.nm.us/ – 45k – Cached – Similar pages

This at first appears to be a questionable result for the first page though it could be a result of huge incoming links from kid related sites.  People looking for an elementary school would tend to use “school” in the query.  I suppose this criticism could also apply to the University listing.   Perhaps the demographic for “Las Cruces” searchers has a good variety of ages including young kids,, making this a reasonable result.

So, it appears that for the query “Las Cruces” Google has done a good job of rounding up relevant sources of information.    Google’s strength is working with highly targeted queries so we’ll try that next for Las Cruces New Mexico related stuff.

Las Vegas Top Ten Suites

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The Travel Channel is profiling the top ten suites in Las Vegas: 

10. Penthouse Suite, Las Vegas MGM Grand.  At about $3000 per night offers 19 phones, an elevator to the second floor, and a spectacular view. 

9. Palms Hotel, Las Vegas.   Adrienne Suite, the “Coolest Suite” in town according to the Travel Channel.  For $1500 per night you get a view of the mountains and city and a hotel address at one of the newest and coolest of the Las Vegas hotspots.

8. Sahara Hotel Casino.  Ambassador Suite.  This “Best Retro Suite offers a 1950’s style look and lots of old vegas glamor and history.

7. Turnberry Place.   This “best alternative” to hotel suites is a rich and famous living hotspot.  They showcase the 5.25 million dollar Suite, home to a wealthy client and will soon be home to many more Las Vegas luminaries and rich folks.  

6. Elvis and Priscilla Suite at the Viva Las Vegas Hotel.   This place does not look like my idea of a honeymoon place, but at $175 you even get neon lights and a Pink Cadillac bed.

5. Paris Las Vegas, Napoleon Suite.    Over 4300 Square feet of opulence, primarily used by high rollers who often come in via private jet.   Normally celebrities don’t stay here.

4. Mandalay Bay Four Seasons’ 180 Degree Suite is the ‘Best Escape” Suite.  $2500 per night.   A $10,000 hand carved bed is uniquie to the suite as is styling that is not typical Las Vegas.  The Four Seasons goal is to remove you from  Enjoy iced grapes at the pool where even the towels are chilled.

3.  Las Vegas Hilton.  Verona Suite.   15,000 Square feet of neo-renaissance opulence abounds in the Verona Suite that is generally for high rollers but unlike many of the other suites the Verona is on the market at $17,500  per night.    25 TV’s and big showers make this Las Vegas’ most expensive suite in terms of building costs according to the Las Vegas Hilton.

2. Venetian Hotel.    The Presidential Suite at the Venetian.  Sheldon Adelson is the Owner of the Venetian and says he likes to offer the Presidential to very high rollers – those who are gambling for 6-8 million per night and $150,000 per … .hand.  Usually playing baccarat.   Enjoy a Guggenheim Art Museum right in the hotel.

1. Bellagio Hotel.   Villa One Suite.  With entry through a private secret tunnel the Bellagio Villa One is a two bedroom, $6,000 per night masterpiece (unless you are a high roller in which case you’ll be paying nothing for the suite, but a lot more over time for the privileges).    Staff pampers guests in a private dining room, private gym, and more.  There are several villas at the Bellagio and each  has a secret garden.  The villas have 130 staff to help make the Bellagio’s Villa One the top suite in the Travel Channel’s roundup and the “most stylish suite” in Las Vegas.

The Bellagio, a 1.6 billion dollar hotel  is only one of 58 five diamond hotels in the world.

Las Vegas Blog

Las Vegas |  Las Vegas History |  Las Vegas Map

Hotel Booking Tip – day and date matter!

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Today’s travel tip is about booking hotel rooms, especially in big cities, especially Las Vegas Nevada. DAY and DATE MATTERS! The chart below is for rooms at the Palace Station Hotel and Casino. This moderately priced, off the Las Vegas strip Hotel gained notoriety today as the location of O.J. Simpson’s armed nabbery of some OJ Memoribilia getting sold by some guy at a room at the Palace Station.

But the key travel point is that if you have *any* flexibility in your travel plans you can save a bundle on the *very same* hotel room. In this example staying weekends at the Palace Station can cost you two or ever *three times* as much as staying mid-week at the very modest $39. New Year’s Eve in the same room is going to run you $189! I stayed at the Las Vegas Hilton two years ago at about $55 per night but then moved to a Fremont Street place for my final night, saving over $100 dollars over the Hilton’s weekend rate and getting to see the nittier and grittier side of Downtown Las Vegas.

Differences like this are greater in Las Vegas than in most places, but the midweek and flexibility rules often apply even in rural America. How to make sure you get the best rate? There’s no golden rule, but generally the best approach is to surf early and surf often and ask a lot of questions of the property itself. In the case of places like the Palace Station this could save you hundreds of dollars.

1 $99
2
$69 		3
$69 		4
$69 		5
$69 		6
$69 		7
$99 		8
$99
9
$49 		10
$49 		11
$49 		12
$49 		13
$49 		14
$69 		15
$69
16
$39 		17
$39 		18
$39 		19
$39 		20
$39 		21
$69 		22
$69
23
$69 		24
$69 		25
$69 		26
$69 		27
$69 		28
$99 		29
$149
30
$169 		31
$189

Hawaii Superferry

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Wow, the Hawaii Superferry is quite an amazing ship.  It’s a massive catamaran style vessel that will Ferry people, cars, and trucks between the Islands of Oahu, Maui, and Kauai (I think that’s the initial route though there are some big environmental protests going on and court actions.  Service is partially suspended pending environmental review).

National Geographic has a special about the building and testing of the ship, which attains a top speed of over 40 nautical miles per hour for the four hour trip from Hawaii to (Maui?).

Superferry Website for more information

Superferry at Wikipedia