AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?

Renting a House Instead of a Hotel Room

Hotels can be a crapshoot when traveling with kids.  Is the room big enough?  Is it too noisy?  Have the drinking glasses been "cleaned" with the same rag used to mop the dirty floor?  Okay, I can't help you with that last one, but the first two questions can be solved by renting a house instead of hotel room.  If you have a large family or want to share lodging costs with your extended family or friends, a house rental is a great option.  Of course, it's not like you can pop on Orbitz and rent a house-- they're a little harder to find.  Unless you know where to look.

Two great sites to start with are:

• www.vrbo.com:  This site claims an inventory of over 95,000 vacation rentals, both in the U.S. and worldwide.  It helps to know exactly where you want to go, as you have to navigate through different towns to get to the inventory.  The site does provide handy, clickable maps to further narrow your search area once you pick a particular state or region.  For example, if you wanted to hobnob in the Hamptons this summer, you can click on New York, then click on the map for Long Island, then pick a particular area from a list (this part may be difficult if you don't know the differences between the particular areas, as there are no maps at this level).  If you chose the Amagansett area, you'd have nine homes to pick from.  Then, click on a link for any particular home and you'll get a detailed rundown on the house, it's price and features, a calendar of available dates, and usually some photos.  You can then click on an e-mail link to inquire about renting.  It's great for browsing.  I guess the one feature I'd like to see is some type of renter feedback to make sure what you see is what you get.  That said, the site does offer the "HomeAway Rent with Confidence Guarantee," which guarantees up to $5,000 of a traveler's payment in the event "the listiing is determined not to be legitimate in accordance with our policy." 
• www.pickpackgo.com: This site is newer and has less inventory (66,000), but offers a more targeted search in that you can search by location, desired ameneties, and number of rooms to narrow down your choices, rather than just browse on a map.  While that's better for people who know their exact dates and location, it's not as good for those who only have a rough idea of where and when they want to go.  Pickpackgo also offers user reviews to help you choose properties. 

 

Don't Drink The Water (At Least Not From A Hotel Room Glass)

I used to be the guy who had two or three different glasses of water or other drinks sitting around my hotel room at any given time.  That changed abruptly this morning, after I watched an undercover investigation on Good Morning America about how well (or more precisely, how poorly) your hotel room glasses are cleaned.  I'll spare you the disgusting details, which you can read about or, more painfully, see for yourself at the GMA website.  But, it's enough to know that 11 of 15 hotels tested failed to remove the used glasses from the room for cleaning, instead using bare hands, dirty hand towels, and possibly even Lysol mildew remover, to "clean" the glasses. 

TJ's got the right idea packing his own sippy cup on these trips (thankfully).  As for the adults, suddenly that $6 bottled water tempting you from atop the mini-bar doesn't look like such a bad deal. . .

Three Ways to Track Your Family's Frequent-Flier Miles and Hotel Points

It’s hard enough to keep track of your own frequent flier miles, hotel points, and various other loyalty program goodies.  If you’re the family travel planner, you may also be charged with keeping track of your spouse’s and kids’ reward accounts.  I’d call it a thankless task, but learning that your toddler just paid for his own seat with his frequent flier miles is a pretty good thanks.  And, in this age of airlines shortening the mileage expiration time period, it’s more important than ever to keep on top of your family’s accounts. 

That’s why I came up with the brilliant idea to create a website where, once you input all of your loyalty program information, you need just one log-in and password to access all of your family’s various accounts.  In fact, my idea is so brilliant, it's already been executed. Several times.

Here are three options to explore for keeping track of your families frequent flier miles and hotel points:

1. MilePort Mileage Manager.  MilePort is a free product from frequentflier.com.  Once you download the software, you can track account data from 121 different online loyalty programs. 
2. Miletracker.  Miletracker is a free downloadable application brought to you by USA Today.  It claims to track "more than 120" frequent flier and loyalty programs.  So, maybe Mileport literally does it one better. 
3. MileageManager.  Mileagemanager differs from the other products mentioned in two main ways.  First, it's not free-- you pay $14.95 for an annual membership.  Second, rather than downloading a program for use on your personal computer, MileManager is web-based and does not require a download.  While the other sites tout the safety of your account data only being downloaded to your personal computer, MileManager sells itself as simpler (no downloads required) and more portable (because it's web-based, travelers can access their information from any comptuer). 

This isn't an exhaustive list of loyalty program trackers, but these are three of the main options.  I haven't spent enough time with each program to do a detailed compare/contrast, so that will be coming soon in a future post.  I'll have that up just as soon as I finish work on my next great invention-- it's an oven that cooks things like ten times as fast as a regular oven, using something called "microwaves."  I haven't figured out what to name it yet, but stay tuned. . .

When Reserving Hotels With Kids, Be Direct

Kids not only change the way you travel (goodbye two-hour meal in nice restaurant, hello early bird special wolfed down before 7:30 bedtime), they change the way you book your travel.  Or, at least they should, if you want things to go as smoothly as possible. 

Pre-TJ, Travelin' Mom and I were not adverse to rolling the dice on a blind Priceline.com hotel bid.  We knew full well we may get the worst room in a hotel, or that our special requests may not get the same attention as those of customers who booked directly through the hotel.  But, we were low maintenance travelers and okay with the cost/benefit trade-off.  And, to be honest, we usually had perfectly fine experiences booking rooms through Priceline or non-bid third-party booking agents like Expedia or Travelocity.

But, as anyone who has ever booked through a third-party site knows, you are trading some things, like flexibility and easy recourse for problems, for the price discount.  At least for us, this price break is no longer worth it.  Here's why:

• Traveling with children is a lot more unpredictable.  Suddenly we're not nearly as confident booking a non-refundable rate, whether through Priceline or directly through the hotel.  You may know when you feel a nasty cold coming on, but your 2-year old may not tell you he's getting a cold until he's sneezed the evidence all over your shirt. 
• We're more picky travelers with a child.  We're less apt to put up with a noisy room or the eau-de-previous-guest's-pack-a-day-habit still wafting in the room. 
• We're more needy travelers.  We usually need to make sure a crib is on hand, or that we can reserve a suite, or that there's a working microwave or mini-fridge in the room. 

So, to sum up, we've become unpredictable, picky, needy guests.  Yikes.  If I were a hotel employee handling us, I'd certainly pass us off our requests and problems to a third-party booking agent every chance I got.  For that reason, we've decided we just won't give them that chance anymore.  My apologies to front desk employees everywhere.

Hotel Chains: How Suite Are They?

Pre-TJ, a hotel suite was a fun but unnecessary luxury.  Travelin' Mom and I spent more time standing around going, "Isn't this cool? We have a suite!" than we did actually using the extra space.  Post-TJ, a hotel suite ranks up there on our trip checklist between a change of underwear and, oh, oxygen. 

You see, TJ's an incredibly light sleeper, which clashes with our preference for staying up past 8 pm on vacation.  Because neither we nor TJ like sleeping in the bathroom, the only workable solution is a two-room hotel suite.  Since this appears to be our travel M.O. for the foreseeable future, we decided to devote our loyalty to whatever hotel chain had the most suite options.  When doing some quick research on all-suite hotels (along with hotels with a large percentage of suites), here's what I discovered:

1. Hilton Honors.  According to stats on various websites (which we all know are 100% reliable), Hilton Honors has:  Hilton Suites (11 nationwide), Embassy Suites (160+), and Doubletree Suites (32).  Hilton also has the Hampton Inn and Suites line, boosting the hotel chain's suite hotel options over 200.
2. Marriott Rewards.  Marriott has Marriott Suites (14 nationwide) and Springhill Suites (130), for just under 150.  The chain also has some Marriott Courtyard and Suites and Fairfield Inn and Suites hotels. 
3. Hyatt Passport.  Hyatt has the Amerisuites chain, consisting of about 140 hotels nationwide. 
4. Starwood Preferred Guest.  Of course the loyalty program I have the majority of my points with would be the one with the least amount of suite options.  On my count, there are 21 Sheraton Suites hotels.  I'll be looking into each one of them before my points expire. 

So, by my analysis, Hilton seems to be the clear-cut winner, suites-wise.  And that's not even counting the Embassy Suites breakfasts and manager's receptions, or those Doubletree cookies (which I'm guessing will now have to go to TJ, damn it.)

Know the Score: Walk Score

As the comedian Steven Wright used to say, "Everywhere's walking distance if you have the time."  Unfortunately, most of us find our time in limited supply.  So, it helps to know exactly how far a walk one location is from another. 

That's why I was excited to read a recent entry from National Geographic Traveler's great "intelligent travel" blog about a site called Walk Score.  As the entry mentions, Walk Score was primarily designed to help real estate buyers determine how "walkable" a prospective home's location was in terms of what was within walking distance.  But, the site has obvious travel applications, too.  Deciding between two hotels?  I'm sure both hotels' websites will tell you how "conveniently located" they are.  Why not let walkscore.com break the tie by providing objective measurements (another plus-- like Steven Wright, people's subjective definition of "walking distance" can vary greatly) down to hundredths of a mile?

As a test, I input our hotel address for an upcoming trip and was quickly greeted with a walking distance list of, among other things, nearby grocery stores, drug stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, movie theaters, and, ready for this families traveling with young kids?, . . . PARKS!  If you click on any of the destinations provided down the left-hand side of the results page, a little bubble pops up in its corresponding location on the center-page map, providing the destination's exact address and a link to any yelp reviews of the destinations. 

Rather than rely on my convoluted explanation, check the site out for yourself.  Using it is a walk in the (hopefully nearby) park.

The Sounds of Hotel Silence

A recent NY Times article discusses a new (and welcome) focus by hotels:  soundproofing.  Chains, always competing to offer the best amenities to prospective travelers, have finally figured out two of the most important amenities:  peace and quiet.  Some efforts include:

• AmericInn chain's "SoundGuard" program, in which the hotel uses masonry blocks filled with sound-deadening foam, in addition to drywall that is 5/8-inch thick, instead of ½-inch, to muffle noise.
• Loews Hotels has been offering free sound-masking machines that emit white noise for light-sleeping guests.
• Luxury hotels like Le Parker Meridien New York have eliminated most of the internal doors that once connected two guest rooms, a prime noise source.

While people find an amazing array of things to complain about when it comes to hotel rooms (no in-room coffee maker!  spotty wireless!), there are really four major complaints one can make about a hotel stay:

1. Bad/inconvenient location;
2. Dirty rooms;
3. Small Rooms; and
4. Noisy.

In this Internet age, if you're not happy with a hotel's location, you have nobody to blame but yourself.  There's no reason to rely on a hotel's statement that it's in "the middle of it all" when you can just look at Mapquest and travel review sites to figure out that "it all" is short for "skid row."    Complaints two through four are tougher to predict ahead of time, as a hotel room's cleanliness, size, and noisiness can vary from room to room.  Also, individual travelers' tolerance for these issues varies.  A hard-of-hearing neat freak might really value a noisy but clean room, whereas a light sleeper would rather sleep on a dirt pile than listen to the elevator dinging all night. 

On that note, families with children probably value quiet more than your average traveler.  First, you don't want anything waking your kids up in the middle of the night, because they might not go back to sleep, and they'll quickly advise you of this fact.  Second, if you have a crying baby or rambunctious pre-teens, you'll be less stressed if you know their cries and screams are muffled by the walls separating you from your neighbor. 

So, you can keep your rain shower heads, your eucalyptus bath products, and your in-room pilates kit.  None of those things make me feel nearly as good as eight hours of uninterrupted sleep by Travelin' Junior will.  I'll be on the lookout for the latest in noise reduction.  Exhibit A:  AmericInn, the beautiful.

Farecast.com: A Cool Site Gets Cooler

Travelin' Mom and I became more sensitive to airline ticket prices once we had to purchase a ticket for Travelin' Junior, which basically increased our flying costs by by 50%.  So, we were happy to discover farecast.com.  Farecast.com has been winning accolades for well over a year now, from Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites list to the Web 2.0 award for best travel site.  Basically, farecast gives you an informed prediction (based on statistics they've collected) as to whether the fare for a particular flight will go up or down in the next seven days.  Most of us play the fare prediction game every time we book travel, and it sure is nice to have a little help now.  Put another way, if you had a website that told you which way the stock market was going next, you'd be logging on, wouldn't you?  Well, farecast may not handle stocks, but it might save you a little extra dough to cover your investment losses.

More specifically, along with an impressive array of data (check the site out yourself to see all the bells and whistles), farecast will give you a bottom-line tip as to whether to wait on a fair or purchase it now.  In case you think they're flipping a coin to decide, farecast also gives you a rating (1 to 100%) as to how confident the site is in its prediction.  You'll also see how the current low fare compares to the historical low fare for the past 90 days.  All good stuff. 

And now, as if farecast already wasn't going to win some type of travel Nobel prize (what? that doesn't exist?), the site added another great feature.  This feature, still in "beta" testing format, will allow you to better evaluate hotel rates.  Just put in your desired city and the dates of your stay and Farecast will create a list of available hotels, color coded to tell you if you're getting a "deal" rate, "average" rate, or "not a deal." (the polite way of saying "gouged.")  You can also narrow your search by number of stars, hotel amenities, hotel brand, location, etc.  This hotel search tool is especially handy because, while you may have an idea what airfare rates usually cost from your home airport to various destination, you probably haven't spent much time following the ebbs and flows of hotel prices in various cities.  If you have, it's time to seriously think about finding a hobby.   

All that being said, farecast isn't perfect.  Farecast doesn't cover every airport or hotel city (it currently handles 75 home airports for flights and 30 destination cities for hotels.)  Also, it seems the airfare and hotel tools only predict out about 90 days, when many of us shop earlier than that to earn the best fares/rates.  And, although I haven't seen any type of disclaimer on the website, I've got to imagine that, like in the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results.  But, it's a helluva lot more information than we'd be armed with otherwise.