Priceline launches hotels for tonight app

by McLean Robbins on

In a potential attempt to compete with apps like Hotel Tonight, Priceline has launched a new Tonight-Only Deals hotel reservations service that is being bundled into its free Hotel & Rental Car Negotiator app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The new service enables last-minute travelers to choose the exact hotels they want for stays the same night and still enjoy Priceline’s discounts.

“Usage trends show that approximately 70% of priceline.com’s mobile customers are booking hotels for same-day check-in, so there’s a clear market need for the Tonight-Only Deals service,” said John Caine, priceline.com’s senior vice president of marketing.

Tonight-Only Deals will be posted on the service at 11:00 a.m. local time and can be instantly booked up until 11:00 p.m. local time, or until they sell out.

The new service will show the names of all the available Tonight-Only Deals hotels with descriptions, maps and photos, along with the rates and the percentage discounts. Tonight-Only Deals also will display each hotel’s customer satisfaction score and reviews generated by priceline.com guests who have stayed there.

Cities where Tonight-Only Deals can be found include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Honolulu, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Washington, DC.

The concept seems easy. When a traveler searches the app’s published-price hotel listings for a same-night stay, the app will also look for Tonight-Only Deals and alert the traveler if specially discounted deals are available. The traveler will then see a list of up to three available hotel room reservations per city and will see which hotels have reservations available. Travelers can choose to see the Tonight-Only Deals or continue with their regular search.

The app is easy to use – we tested it for our home market (Washington, DC) and easily found three deals for hotels we’d definitely consider at an average discount of about 20%, usually somewhere between $20 and $50.

In contrast, Hotel Tonight, a similar app, showed significantly more area results (two in Arlington, three in DC, and three resorts within a few hour drive). The discounts here appeared to be greater, but the geographic concentration may have been less desirable, depending on what you were looking for.

At the moment, it just means that we’ll be checking both apps when we make sure we find the best possible hotel and the best deal.

Ajungo, the new social network platform just for travelers

by Jessica Festa on

Sick of searching through advice sites and hearing reviews from who only knows? Wish you could connect with other travelers about past or upcoming trips and events? Love social networking but wish you could interact with others in your travel niche? Then there is a brand new social media website just for travelers that brings together all of these platforms into one site.

Ajungo, created by Ben Barton and Steve Shea, is a brand new networking site that allows travelers to connect before, during, and after a trip. Here is how it works:

1) Create a profile and link all of your social networking sites. What this does is allows the site to funnel through your social networking platforms to pull information and funnel it around specific
destinations.

2) Find others who have been to your destination of choice and look through their posted trip or ask them for advice. Or, you can find others who will be in your destination of choice and plan to meet up or travel together.

3) Create your trip canvas, which consists of enabling the sites real-time travel guide feature so that the site can pull your photos and updates while you’re on your trip. This allows other travelers to learn from your experience as well as acts like a blog or trip journal by keeping your trip memories organized and sharing them with friends.

The goal of the site is to make travel more social as well as more comfortable for people going to new destinations. And, if there is any information that you do not want shared, the site will not post it without your permission.

Make connections with travelers, view their trips, find travel buddies, or just interact with others in the travel community. It is all possible on Ajungo.

Explore Thailand right from TriBeCa, New York

by Jessica Festa on

On October 17, 2011, from 6:30-9:30 PM, ProjectExplorer.org will debut their fifth film series, “Sawasdee, Thailand”. The film will be in high definition, so if you’ve never walked down the bustling streets of Bangkok or relaxed on a beach in Khao Lak, here is your chance to get a feeling of what it’s like to visit Thailand. The event is being held at the Tribeca Grand Hotel and is being co-hosted by Andrew McCarthy, travel writer and actor, Jenny M. Buccos, the ProjectExplorer.org’s series creator, and another special guest.

Not only is this event a chance for attendees to get a closer look at what Thailand has to offer, it’s also an opportunity to network with other like-minded, travel enthusiasts. There will also be various raffles, giving people a chance to win travel-themed prizes, tickets to live shows, jewelry, lessons, and more. Interested parties should click here to purchase tickets to the event.

ProjectExplorer.org is a nonprofit organization founded by Jenny M. Buccos that produces free, online global travel series. The aim of their work is to expose primary and secondary school students and educators to people and places that they have never seen before. Through their website, teachers and students have access to over 250 videos, more 1,200 images, and over 150 cross-curricular lesson plans.

I (sometimes) love New York. New app invites New Yorkers to complain about their hometown

by McLean Robbins on

Tourists wear it, New Yorkers live it. Most Big Apple dwellers will tell you that they love New York – and if the choose to complain, well, it’s their city to complain about. But for the first time, New Yorkers are asked to weigh in on the question, “Does New York Love You Back?”

DOES NY LOVE U BACK? is a website and iPhone app where New Yorkers can submit praises or complaints about life in the Big Apple. These expressions are then plotted onto an interactive map of New York City.

“This app isn’t about namedropping places, like other services,” said creator Erik Trinidad, (no shock here) a Brooklyn resident. “The good or bad experiences of New York don’t always happen in specific places. They happen on the street or on the subway – anywhere. This project is merely an experimental interactive sounding board for New Yorkers wherever they are in the five boroughs.”

“It’s easy to love the city, but it’s also easy to hate this city. Being able to express any emotion at any time is necessary. And that’s what this app does. It’s the voice of NYC,” saids Jon Darren, an East Village resident.

The voice of NYC seems small so far – there are only a few dozen comments posted on the site, ranging from loving to only-in-nyc style moments such as Chris from Midtown who says “Gangstarr blasting at Num Pang and all the suits don’t know what to do,” and E from Brooklyn who “is watching an old man refuse to get out of the shot, as the neighborhood has turned into a film set yet again.” Another favorite comes from Judy from Gramercy who says that “Unattractive guys should not be wearing daisy dukes and flip flops.” We’re with you, Julie. Although we’re pretty sure no guy should ever sport daisy dukes.

The website also links to an on-line store where t-shirts, amongst other things, can be purchased. The t-shirts are modeled in a gallery section, which expresses thoughts from the five boroughs of NYC – the mostly cynical ones.

So feel free – tweet, shout or wear your love and hate with abandon. Or use the app to figure out where the love (or hate) propels you to visit (or not) on your next trip to the city.

Swiss village Obermutten has more Facebook fans than residents

by McLean Robbins on



A tiny Swiss mountain village is taking social media to a new level. Obermutten in Graubuenden has promised anyone who “likes” the town on Facebook that they will put his/her photo onto the Commune’s official notice board. By doing this, they say, anybody anywhere in the world can “become Swiss”. After only three days, the village already has fifteen times more fans than residents, and this number is growing by the day.

The identity pictures are printed out by a councillor and pinned up on the noticeboard and the fans thus become part of the village community. So far, the fan list has grown so fast that they’ve filled the town’s message board and resorted to using a barn side to post pictures. The eighty inhabitants – many still without an internet connection – like to get to know their fans in this way.

The Commune, located in the Graubuenden holiday region, seems excited by their newfound fame.

“Obermutten is developing a personal relationship with its guests. Here it’s not a question of the total volume, but of each individual one. Why shouldn’t this be the same for us in the internet?” said Martin Wyss, Mutten’s village president.

The village president communicates with his fans in short video YouTube messages like the one seen above.

Wow, this is really taking “social” to a new level.