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Friday, May 7, 2010

New Luxury Hotel Resources!

Hey everyone,

As I continue to find interesting stories and hotels, I come across a lot of sites that are useful in searching for a luxury hotel for your vacation.  I don't want to overwhelm you with too many sites, so as Hotel Hopper evolves, I will try to to keep the resources listed at the bottom of the page to an optimal set of sites that you can explore for your personal needs.  I may add sites on occasion and take some away on others.  Here are the best new resources that I have found and have decided to add to the resource list:

Splendia: This site is my favorite of the new sites and maybe one of the best I have seen so far.  Not only does it feature a large selection of 4500 luxury hotels all over the world, but it offers a pretty extensive set of options for exploring the collection.  These options include, but are not limited to, searching by location and theme, whether it be general luxury, spa, boutique, or design.  In addition, once you have started a search, you can refine the search in many ways, such as by the type of experience you are looking for in your vacation, hotel facilities and amenities, style, and location.  One of my favorite features is that Splendia also lists starting rates for rooms at the hotels, so you can have an idea of the price point without putting in arbitrary dates for reservations.  You can also view all of the listed hotels in your search on a map so that you can make a more informed decision on the exact location you want to stay at your destination.  Splendia also has a members benefit club where returning customers can gain access to special rates and rewards.  Overall, a great site with useful tools for finding your hotel destination.

Tablet Hotels:  This is also another great site that doesn't feature as large of a selection (which is sometimes a good thing), but it has a lot of content related to luxury hotels and travel.  Tablet features over 1800 selected hotels and, much like Splendia, has a lot of ways to hunt down your desired hotel.  There are two recently released features on the site, which include member access to exclusive and last minute hotel deals, and a nice integrated Google Maps search interface that allows users to search for hotels by location and theme.  The Tablet site also provides reference guides for selected destinations and maintains a travel blog, but the best content-related feature on the site is the Tablet 10.  This page features all sorts of Top 10 lists for hotels in different categories.  I will probably explore this more in a future post so be on the look out.

Preferred Hotels & Resorts: Preferred Boutique was already listed in the resources, but I wanted to add this site as well.  Obviously, they are part of the same group, but focus on different categories of luxury hotels.  This site is more formal in that it is basically just a search site to find luxury hotels.  There isn't much in terms of content, but you are gaining access to a highly rated selection of hotels.  There isn't as much 'guidance' as there is on the site as far as refining your search, but there is a nice interactive map so that you can search by location.  There is also the I Prefer member rewards program that provides benefits to customers that use the services of the Preferred Hotel Group and its alliance partners.

Hotique: Hotique is another nice site I found that again provides some pretty good assistance for narrowing your search to a single selection.  There are lots of options at the bottom of the home page for searching by category and destination.  Once you select one of these options, there are suggestions and featured hotels that serve as a good starting point.  Of course, you can always just search if you are looking for something specific.  There is also a Travel Center page that offers suggestions on other travel related issues such as destination guides, airlines, and other important details.

Luxique: As far as I can tell, Luxique is not related to Hotique, so I guess making your site sound like boutique is just a popular theme these days.  Luxique features a collection of over 2000 hotels that are not limited to just the boutique category.  The Destination Guides are a nice feature that provides suggestions for the best luxury hotels by destination and some recommendations on what to do there.  There is also an interesting blog that I have refined to hotel articles and added to the Blog List.

As I am beginning to learn and as you are surely seeing by the growing list of resources on Hotel Hopper, there are tons of sites out there for finding a luxury hotel for you travels.  For now, I am trying to stick to sites with more of a global capacity, but there are advantages to sites with a more localized focus.  It can be overwhelming, but the best sites out there will offer some tools that will help you narrow down that search into something more manageable.  Reward programs are also nice once you decide to use one or more of the sites on a consistent basis.  Finally, there is something a little more authentic about a visually appealing site.  Some of the sites I did not include were certainly lacking in that category, regardless of the other benefits.  Try out a few of the sites I have suggested to see what you like.  Let me know what you think!

.sb06

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