Worst Hotel Ever? Check Hotel Reviews Before You Book

A few weeks ago a poster on Digg.com posted a link to this page of reviews on TripAdvisor.com, declaring that it was probably the worst hotel ever. He had a chorus of people agreeing with him--especially the parts about the bedbugs, dead mice, and the nightly invasion of cockroaches coming out of the bathroom drains (according to the hotel's manager, a rolled-up towel smashed under the bathroom door keeps them at bay).

I'm not sure about that claim, but I have definitely benefited from hotel and hostel rating sites by avoiding those establishments--in Europe and America--with the worst ratings.

For a good list of the top 10 hotel rating sites see: "Top 10 Internet Sites with Hotel Reviews: Value for your Money" by Mark Kahler at about.com.

For reviews of hostels see: www.BUG.co.uk; www.hostels.com; and www.hostelworld.com.

New TripAdvisor.com Feature Lets You Compare Flight Search Results from Many Online Booking Agencies and Calculate Hidden Fees

Here's a useful new search feature that was written up in the travel section of the New York Times. According to Joe Sharkey in "A Clearing in the Fog of Complicated Booking",

TripAdvisor, the wide-ranging travel site owned by Expedia, introduced a search function that quickly sorted out flights and variables, including fees, connections and even the layout of the plane, from data pulled from a vast range of online booking agencies, including airlines’ own sites and sites like Travelocity, Hotwire and Expedia