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!

Foodio54

OK, check this out...ever land in a city - have a few minutes to grab a bite to eat but are not jonesin' for hotel food? Foodio54's mashup looks like a very easy to use mashup. I was hungry for hamburgers - and was happy to report that this great new tool found some of my favorite Dallas burger joints. 22 listings were returned and of there were a few typical chain restaurants in the listing but burger legends - Goff's, Scotty P's, Ball's and K's were also in the returned results.

I see a hotel site in the future for Ohio based mash.

Happy mashing....

J

Word of Mouth - Mashedup...

This weekend's surfing has discovered a few brand new - and cool mash ups....


You may have heard of Word of Mouth Advertising - buzz word of 2006 - and creative idealogy behind the WOMMA association. This old is new marketing focus has inspired the new spokenbuzz mashup. Essentially, you can blog away via audio files and those are tagged with your location or location of topic file....think about it - you want to give a shout out about a new restaurant - create this tag and all users who have tagged this topic can chime in...via cellphone! Talk about instant feedback...
A hotel's marketing team could instantly create the "buzz" by creating campaigns and having its loyal guests comment online....

I was reading how the world's broadband subscriptions are increasing by hundreds of thousands each day and that all of these new eyeballs will help drive the internet to new heights - and that the "experts say" they all have a decent amount of spendable income....more speed means better ability to view rich media...take a look at this site...Trivop claims to be the world's first video guide for hotels...This UK based mash up is counting on all users having the ability to access their rich media...I kinda like the idea. I looked at the Sumner hotel in London by clicking the tag icon on its google map display. Trivop opened a window that launched its video with optional tags to review its tripadvisor reviews etc. Looked like a nice hotel.

Happy surfing...

GPS' Google Maps Mobile Mash

Have you bought a GPS device yet?

These have exploded onto the retail scene over the last 18-24 months. Seems like everyother car either has a GPS dash app or a plugged in device sucking on its front window. I don't know if I will ever need one - but I sure do want one - must be a gadget thing...all guys love gadgets.

GPSies is a cool new mashup that allows you to access, review and even download tracks that have been previously recorded by a GPS device. You can search for hiking routes, jogging trail, driving directions etc. Pretty neat stuff. I could see a hotel's website having a version of this available for its travellers to download running routes prior to arrival. The Technophiles would love to have a route to run along using that Birthday present/gift that still is not fully utilized...

I downloaded the Mobile version of Google Maps to my blackberry device. I love it. It has come in handy a few times while needing to find out just how far the traffic I was stuck in was and if I had an alternate route to choose from. The only thing is that while I was navigating my vehicle with one hand holding my blackberry - another dude with a blackberry in hand was also cutting into my lane - trying to make that same turn...Keep your eyes on the road - dude!

Why is it that more hotels have not loaded their content on GoogleMaps yet? Its free and its cool....so far, Destination Hotels incorporating Google Maps on their Hotel Websites has proven that they are a leader in this vertical. Watch more and more hotel companies following their lead...

Safe journeys....

Mashups that matter

Have you found yourself reviewing mashups - then thinking - why is this relevent? Or even - What the Heck Is a MashUp and Why Do I Care?

Don't get me wrong - having a website that show me where free WiFi locations are, or even where I can find a parking spot at the airport (Not that I ever am rushing to the airport...) actually do make sense if they have relevent content and people are really using these tools...I really like WeatherBonk and SkiBonk - two mashups that are functional, easy to use and have useful content.

But...

Lately it seems that people are mashing the open APIs available via Google, Yahoo some pretty odd topic/search indexes...Oatmeal Music for iPhone is a cool site with a very eclectic collection of sites to pull from. I wish I had gophernow when I was in college and needed to eat late at night (can we still say munchies?)

Or even LivePlasma -a visually rich application that combines the Amazon API to show the relationship between movies, bands, actors, etc. You can go straight from interacting to making purchases. Is "MashCommerce" a word yet?

I will continue to monitor these mash up conglomerates to find some that really matter - to me of course...

One that has kept me intrigued lately is TravelGoop which mashes Priceline and Hotwire discounted hotel rates on one site. Simply put in the city your are traveling too and press "Search" and rates are returned for that destination - pretty cool - now if they can show me a competitive opaque listing for 5* hotels in the city center for under $90 bucks - I am ready for the weekend.

Stay tuned....