Finding hotels remains a PITA in 2012. There have been amazing strides made in the past, say, 10-15 years for sure. But amazingly, many hotels still don’t feature detailed information about their rooms and giant photos of said rooms.
Sites like TripAdvisor have stepped up to some degree, but lately I’ve been more impressed by Oyster. Oyster sends people out to check out the hotels, undercover, and takes tons of photos – which then, amazingly, end up on their site. The photos are gloriously large as they should be. The drawback is that Oyster doesn’t review every hotel in a city and their city list remains short.
But Oyster also answers questions some hotel sites still don’t. For example, I’m looking for a hotel for a short anniversary trip and one of the things I need is a nice soaking tub. For a few hotels I’m looking at, there’s nothing on their sites saying simply, “Tub in bathroom.” Instead I’ve been able to use Oyster, find photos of the rooms, and go from there.
It’s really too bad that some hotels’ sites aren’t quite there yet. Until then, there are good companies like Oyster picking up the slack.
Posted in Consumer Commentary