I received an email from a PR firm about a new community from Marriott for Marriott Reward’s members called Marriott Rewards Insiders.

Interesting features of the Marriott Rewards Insiders community include the following:

• Registered members can use the site to check out information, post their own questions and add their two-cents with responses.
• Member profiles can be customized with avatars, stated travel preferences and info about their hometown—with as little or as much info as they like.
• Members can sign up for alerts on new posts about topics that interest them. They can be emailed or posted in the member’s profile.
• Topics range from Marriott’s Rewards use to international nightlife.
• Members can contact Marriott and get a direct response to their comments and questions.

I had to laugh. Not because I think that this is a bad community or that I am against communities… far from it. When I am not working on the Amateur Traveler I am the EVP of Engineering and Operations for a company called LiveWorld that builds and runs online communities and social networks for companies. Some of our clients include travel companies. At least one of our clients is a major hotel chain. Figured it out yet? Yes, they were pitching the site to me but my team built and operates the site. It is indeed a small world.

My wife and I often stay in the Monterey Marriott for our wedding anniversary so I was a member of their rewards program before they were a customer. We used to stay at a different place every year but Marriott spoiled my wife.

If you are a Marriott Rewards member check out their new community. If you stay at a Marriott property (which includes Marriott Hotels & Resorts, JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Renaissance Hotels, Courtyard, Residence Inn, Fairfield Inn, Conference Centers, TownePlace Suites, SpringHill Suites, Marriott Vacation Club) and are not a Marriott Rewards member… why not?

So you want to book a trip online. There are many sites to go to, how do you know which one is the best? That was the question that I had when I got an email from Cfares.com PR agency telling me how much better Cfares.com was than the traditional travel sites: Orbitz.com, Expedia.com and Travelocity.com. Cfares is one of a collection of new sites that searches across a number of travel sites at once to try and get the best deal. I decided to see which of the aggregator sites worked the best against a set of routes that I chose somewhat at random. I checked all of the sites at the same time in case fares might be changing.

The Big Three

First we can look at the results for these 7 destinations from Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity. All three sites did about the same although Expedia did the best of the three.

Airfare Aggregators

Then we can look at the 5 aggregator sites Kayak, Cfares, Farechase, Mobissimo and Momondo. Since the aggregator sites often search Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia you will see that at least one of the aggregator sites beat the fares of the big three. Not also that even the aggregators don’t search some low cost carriers like Southwest.

1. Some of the searches on these sites produced no results and are marked with “not found”. No doubt if I had kept trying I would have gotten a result but Cfares and Momondo seem to have some scaling problems in this test.
2. Cfares has a premium offering which costs $50 a year and one of the fares given has two results, for premium users and normal users.

It used to be that when a restaurant found that a restaurant critic was coming or when a hotel found out that a hotel reviewer would be staying they could make an extra effort to give the best possible experience. One of the changes that the Internet has made is that everyone eating at a restaurant and anyone staying at the hotel might be a critic. With the advent of sites like TripAdvisor.com the power that used to be held by the press is now held by the everyday consumer.

Many or most people who write reviews on travel review sites are honestly intending to help the people that will travel after them. They write honest reviews about real experiences. Granted what they think is dirty you may think is acceptable and what they think is wonderful food you may find uninspiring, but an honest review tells you some valuable information when put in the correct context. A thoughtful well written review is of particular value.

But, as Lord Acton once told us, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Stories are starting to come back from hotel and restaurant owners of a darker side of TripAdvisor and other review sites.

We stayed at a wonderful hotel in Santorini called Villa Mathios. Our host was accommodating, gregarious and helpful. He told us stories of guests who he let use his personal computer to check their email. He let them check in before the official check in time. But when they went to leave they asked for a ride to the airport at 6:30 AM. That is not part of the service he provides. He runs a hotel, restaurant and even a travel agency but not a free taxi service. So even though they had had a wonderful stay they threaten to write a bad review of the hotel (and did so when he does not relent).

I love user contributed content, community and social networks. My day job is running online communities for many well known companies. But these sort of dark side of community stories show that there is still value in editorial opinion. There is still value in the opinion of trusted friends or trusted bloggers / podcasters.

As someone who is 6 foot 3 inches tall but too cheap to buy a first or business class airline ticket i was very interested to read an article on GeekAbout.com for The 10 Most Comfortable Airline Economy Seats

Their winner was Virgin America which is consistent with other reports I have heard. My only quibble is that they list United Airlines, but be aware that they are talking about the more expensive economy plus ticket. One of the worst experiences I have had with an airline seat with no leg room was in an economy seat on United from Hawaii to California.

There is a new player in the hotel review space which is TVTrip.com. TVTrip hosts video reviews of hotels. At this time they have “115 destinations, 5530 hotels, 494008 reviews, 4937 videos”. That is a very small percentage of the world’s hotels but the value of actually being able to see the hotel (if they have a review for it) seems of greater value to me than a textual review.