Two New Hotel Websites for Room Choices and Subarban Properties

With so many websites dealing with hotels, is there room for more? Apparently, some big internet investors think there is. A new site called Room77 ( www.room77.com ) lists as its sponsors a number of well-known founders or co-founders of famous travel-related websites, like Expedia. It also boasts that it has picked up millions of dollars in financing from Wall Street hedge funds and the like. And what's their brand-new discovery? The valuable service we've all been waiting for? They display the essential facts (distance from the elevator, lack of connecting doors, size, and the views they enjoy) of rooms at leading hotels. No longer need you worry about being assigned to a substandard abode, even if you've booked at a top-notch hotel. You can now demand, as a condition of booking, that you receive room 834. Or room 469. Or room 1258. Room77 actually contains photographs of the views that each such room enjoys, as well as other essential information.

Are you intrigued? Eager for that information? Room77 is very much in its initial, beta-type condition, and thus far lists information for only a small percentage of the hotels it will eventually cover. But it does cover major hotels in most of the leading cities. A single, disturbing thought (confined, maybe, to me alone): how will the hotel be able to guarantee the availability of a particular room in view of the fast changing assignment needs of that hotel?

The second new hotel website is Excellent Hotels ( www.excellenthotels.com ), sponsored by Auto Europe, of all people. In a dramatic extension of the information it normally provides, Auto Europe's ExcellentHotels.com lists discounted rates at major, luxurious hotels in many of the world's leading cities. And how does it differ from other sites? In addition to claiming that it deals only with luxury hotels (which seems odd in view of its statement that its hotels are also of either three-star, four-star, or five-star status -- with five-star properties the only ones that can really be called "luxury hotels" -- the site seems to emphasize hotels away from the center of cities. I may be guessing, because my analysis is based on a random testing of it, but it seems to me that ExcellentHotels.com features hotels that can best be used by travelers who have rented a car, hotels near airports or in the suburbs. I may be wrong, in which case your correction will be gratefully received. But this is exactly what you'd expect from the famous Auto Europe, that for sixty years has been offering auto rentals to the public.