Airport Parking

Hi All,
Its been a while since my last post - too much travel, not enough surfing time ;-)
I have been experimenting with the different parking options at the airport.
Have you ever valet parked at the airport?
Or had your car washed and/or even had the oil changed while you were away?
These options and more are mashed up on About Airport Parking.
I LOVE the valet service at DFW.
Cheers and safe journeys....

Vacation Home vs Hotel/Resort

More and more websites are developed each day. The number of Vacation Rental websites is growing even faster than other travel related sites. Vacation Centric uses the latest GoogleMaps API and allows quick navigation to available vacation homes all over the world. Other sites like Zonder bring beautifully displayed, custom built booking engines to this emerging market.

Can Hoteliers compete with this? Or will they rely on the Hotel/Condo trend compensate for this marketplace?

For my family, a vacation home makes a lot of sense. I have not ventured to be so bold as to book one yet, but I am very tempted.

Stay tuned....I will post my experience booking and staying at a vacation home soon.

The Five Space

A hip hotel in Paris is focusing on the web 2.0 phenomenom by creating its own interactive portal. The Five Hotel located in the Latin quarter, has empowered its guest to interact with other guests and share their experiences.

Securing the web page www.thefivespace.com has allowed guests to post their profile, describe their stay and even earn "badges" based on levels of interaction - the more you post - the more you earn.

Neat concept. Note: there is a creepy site pal on the home page that tells you a little about the site then follows your mouse movement with her eyes.

Vacation Homes and Cottages

Traveling with my family (wife and 3 kids) is challenging enough - but when we are forced to look for 2 hotel rooms because the maximum occupancy allowed is 4 pax - alternatives are sought. We have been lucky in finding suite type properties in most cities but I am really getting into Vacation homes. More and more vacation rental conglomerates are enabling their inventory to be accessed online - just like a typical hotel. Case in point - One Stop Cottage - Great new mashup of a vacation home reservation system and a mapping service with pictures and neat tools to choose the perfect house for your holiday.

There are occasions when we would need to bring our four legged family members along for the ride - and this new mashup allows you to easily see which hotels allow pets. Petswelcome allows you to search by Location, Hotel Brand and even driving route - which will display all pet friendly hotels along your way to Grandma's house.

New Yahoo Map Mixer

I was surfing last night and came across this cool new tool for Yahoo's mapping service. You can upload and overlay an existing map onto the Yahoo Map page...very easy and it reuses maps that you may already have but were not adequate for web sites. I think hoteliers could use their maps from their Rack Cards and overlay into this tool for interactive mapping capabilities on their proprietary website. http://maps.yahoo.com/mapmixer
Have fun playing with this new toy!

B&B follies

I am seeking a nice getaway to explore with my wife and was searching for a cool bed and breakfast within a few hours drive from Dallas...lots of one off sites came up in my generic search on Google but I was hoping to find a cool site that not only lists the B and B's but also give me options...low and behold...Pillows and Pancakes brought a mashup to my rescue. I didn't even know there were nicer b and b's close by...shows me how out of touch I am with this market segment.

Speaking of other market segments - DFW is at the cutting edge (maybe bleeding edge) of new resort properties being built. You may have seen articles in HotelMarketing about the amount of new Hotel/Waterparks being built all over the US. The Great Wolf Lodge is due to open in early 2008 (I am not responsible for the cheesy music on their site!).

I just found out about the new Bear Fire Resort which has broken ground North of Fort Worth, Texas. It is due to open in late 2009 and it boasts glaciers, gondolas, ski runs, half pipe and a world class spa...Did I just mention that this is TEXAS? Can you imagine a total ski-able area of an unbelievable 650,000 square feet?

Drive to destinations are the in thing....Waterparks, Ski resorts...what's next? Surfing resorts in Downtown Big D? Could happen - stay tuned.....

The ultimate mashup for hotels

OK, so I am still searching for the ultimate mashup for hotels. One that can assist me from start to finish in selecting a property based on availability, rates, location and star ratings in one user friendly GUI.


I think I may have found a strong contender. Check out MashedHotels. Their claim to fame is to allow you to View, Compare and Book Hotels based on location. I thought their GUI was one of the easiest to use for selecting the parameters I was seeking and the results I received were laid out on google map display of the city. I was able to zoom in and there were great images loaded for some of the available hotels. And, each hover-over also displayed lowest available rates.



I also ran across 71miles, a great site that focused on the shorter trips - within a few hours drive. Currently displaying info on the Bay Area of California and the Washington DC area, this cool new category of travel focused on regionalized content was very well laid out, chock full of great info and easy to use. The founders promise more locales coming soon - I hope so!



Go big or go home!