More reader question and answer time! Here’s from from Paul M:
I’m headed to Vail for a short holiday, how do I tell which hotels are better than others?
Okay, there’s a few ways you can go about this. Many people get recommendations from friends or forums, but it’s hard to get a rounded opinion of hotels from the few forum answers or friends that you ask.
Here’s what I recommend:
Use TripAdvisor.com
Tripadvisor is basically a review site for travel destinations. You can do a quick search for your destination and you’ll get a ranking of the top hotels and attractions in the region.
You simply input a destination such as “Whistler, British Columbia” and it’ll come back with a list of hotels that people recommend and rank them by rating and reviews.
Here’s an example using Whistler as my destination:
Plus you can finetune your rankings via price (eg – search by lowest to highest price):
You can also check out reviews left by previous guests:
It also allows you to book your hotel straight through tripadvisor, although I recommend you also check out booking sites such as Kayak.com when looking to book your hotel because the prices are usually cheaper.
Overall, it’s a really useful tool for getting a rough idea of which hotels are good and it’s a tool I use all the time, not just for snow travel.
Hope that helps!
– Jed