Bloggers Choice Awards: 5 Best Travel Blogs

“Alea iacta est”, or “the votes haven been cast”: According to the community at Blogger’s Choice Awards these are the 5 best Travel Blogs:

1) 464 Votes: Hostel Buenos Aires.

It’s not only a Blog about a Hostel in Buenos Aires, but a Travel portal to the city as well.

2) 390 Votes: Everything Everywhere.

Gary Arndt is on a mutli-year round the world trip to see everything and go everywhere. This website is the journal of his adventures.

3) 153 Votes: Charco Trip.

The experiences of living, studying and loving abroad, travel journals… and the experiences coming back home. From Mexico to Europe…

4) 143 Votes: Flower Girl’s Rural India.

Indian Culture, customs, traditions, facts, Festivals, Life, lifestyles, people with great photo shots.

5) 122 Votes: Following the Equator.

Wide-ranging blog covering travel news and other education and international topics.

Congratulations All!

Blogistan @ JoeSentMe.com

Joe Sent Me

Found Happy Hotelier among Joe’s Blog list. Wow!
Blogistan @ JoeSentMe.com

HOW TO USE THIS PAGE TO FIND TRAVEL BLOGS
We’ve come a long way from the Rosetta Stone to the Internet blog. Whether blogs help us decipher the intricacies of travel, however, is an open question. Blogs are the ultimate expression of free speech for everyone. But when everyone speaks, clarity is often a casualty. What we’re attempting at the JoeSentMe Blogistan page is to bring some order to the cacophony. A selection of the best-known (and, we assume, best-read) travel blogs appears in the left column. By executive fiat, we have excluded the promotional blogs penned by travel-industry corporations. We’ve also excluded destination-specific travel blogs. Many are wonderful, but it would be impossible to list even a representative sample here. What appears in the column below is our assessment of some of the best blogs and bloggers in their respective categories. It is, by definition, brutally selective and highly subjective. If we have missed a blog that you think should be listed here, drop me a line. (By the way, if you are looking for a travel columnist–you know, the folks who write on a set schedule in a more traditional format–please consult our Fellow Travelers page.) — Joe Brancatelli

High Five (4): about Travel Marketing, Networking, Hotel Guests and Guest Reviews

Gorilla High Five

Here are Happy Hotelier’s High Five (3) for:

  1. The Value of Social Networking for a Large Business by Ken Burgin who refers to a slideshow in a style I like from Sacha Chua. Ken has a keen eye for the unusual and a lot of experience
  2. Office Worker Going Insane and Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane. There is a petite histoire here that I will disclose in a separate post if I can remember what I thought when I wrote this.
  3. Not all Hotel Rooms are created Equal where Hotel Marketing reviews Trip Kick, another user generated hotel review site. The idea is great when hotels will be more and more apt to publish their floor plans and detailed room lay out, so that you can really can make a choice. In my experience the best site with a real choice is that of Propeller Island City Lodge

About Happy Hotelier’s High Five
Happy Hotelier’s High Five is a meant as a gesture of appreciation to fellow Bloggers who blog about travel and are sometimes referred to as members of the “T-List” or other interesting Bloggers or Web Personalities.

The arms are usually extended into the air to form the “high” part, and the five fingers of each hand meet, making the “five”, hence the name, although Happy Hotelier’s High Five will always be a left handed one.

I will not publish it on a scheduled date. I will publish it each time when I have found five persons or sites or posts that I deem worthy a High Five. It even may imply me echoing old news here.

The Category Tag here on Happy Hotelier is High Five.

If you want to draw my attention to a post, please use the Contact Page or give me a message at Twitter

About The High Five Logo

I borrowed the photo of a sculpture from Lisa Roet, a sculptor born in Australia and currently living and working in Melbourne, Australia, because one of the main items on my passport is that I miss a big chunk of my right thumb, so my right hand is much alike that of an ape:-)

Blogging Hotel Insiders

Waiter Rant

Hotel Front Desk Blog’s post Hotel Bloggers Linky (Not Kinky) Love inspired me to this post. [had to eliminate the links as the blog has become defunct since]

He lists a couple of Hotel Insider Blogs, because:

Unlike most other industries, there is not a lot of hotel related blogs penned by employees & insiders actually working in the hospitality industry – most seem to be just another marketing or promotional avenue written by hotels themselves as a management/public relations tool. While this is great, and I’m glad that a lot of hotels are catching onto the trend (yay, technology=good!), it leaves a lot to be said. While reading about the latest and greatest in room types and package promotions is always a good thing – more often than not, I’d much rather be reading about what really goes on behind the scenes, from the perspective of the staff that works there.

Although Front Desk Boy doesn’t see it that way:

Happy Hotelier: More focused on industry headlines than anything else, but a few viewpoints along the way from the author. Personally I think I’d like to read some stories from the author, as I like his style.

I strongly believe I am a hotel insider. I am running a small luxury all suites hotel. As the in house jack of all trades one of my functions is that of the Front Desk Manager. He would love to see more personal stories. Well I can’t do that. Insider stories might all too easy include and identify my guests, as the operation is so small that each guest story can be easily connected to a specific guest. Moreover I don’t like to remain incognito as FDB and some other insiders have to for the same obvious reason: keep in house what should be kept in house. Thanks for the nudge anyway FDB.

As Don Meador puts it: FDB’s list is a great beginning of a list. He misses a few. Therefore I have made my own list of hotel insiders.

Hotel insiders usually should have (had) some working experience in a hotel. I don’t mind them working in sales or marketing. I even don’t mind if they don’t work in a hotel anymore, but have some great insights to offer about hotels. And since Food and Beverage are great ingredients for many hotels, I also don’t mind it they are working in Food and Beverage, even without letting rooms.

  1. A Luxury Travel Blog. More or less an insider with a luxury travel blog and with a family background in self catering in the British Lake District, UK. and started his own self catering in 2009.
  2. Blog Mr and Mrs Smith by Tamara, Mrs Smith her good self.
  3. Budget Travel Tips from Eurocheapo. Well, because they asked nicely.
  4. Cool Travel Guide by Lara Dunston in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. A perpetual globetrotter and travel writer who has authored and contributed to over 30 travel guidebooks.
  5. Crazy hotel Workers a community.
  6. Daniel Edward Craig, the former author of the Opus Hotel Blog until he left his position at the Vancouver Opus Hotel to become a full time Hotel Crime Thriller writer. Unfortunately, since he left, the Opus Hotel Blog isn’t anymore what it used to be under the new author Katrina Caroll-Foster. Come on Katrina a soft nudge to continue Daniel’s work, or do as Bill Marriott: Dictate the blog!
  7. Feather or Foam? by a House Keeping Queen of Clean.
  8. Future Blog From Design Hotels [added March 2010].
  9. Gadling A Hotel review site.
  10. Get a Room by Don Meador, director of sales of The Landmark Hotel Group in Virginia Beach, VA, USA.
  11. Hotel Check-In I picked it up when Barbara Delollis was keeping it with a personal touch for jus the business traveler. After she left it gradually evolved in a mainstream hotel blog aiming all hotel guests.
  12. Hotel Chatter. A hotel review blog
  13. Hotel Hallways Mister Arthur who is in advertising shows us the dour hotel hallways.
  14. Hotel i Tour. Claude Benard’s main blog, since he gave up writing for Les Explorers. Claude is probably the only Frenchman in France writing a travel blog in English as Guillaume lives in the UK.
  15. Hotel Manager Talk. Kevin Levine produces his own Hotelier podcast covering topics around N. America.
  16. Hotel Marketing Strategies By Josiah – See my Interview with him.
  17. Hraba Hospitality Consulting Blog
  18. Living with Legends. A diary about Hotel Chelsea in NYC.
  19. Marriott on the Move. The Bill Marriott, who, in my opinion, does a good job with his blog. Even if it is mainly about Marriott, he doesn’t avoid critical sounds in his comments.
  20. My Marrakesh by Maryam who has has been building her own Moroccan Guest-house.
  21. The Barmaid Blog : A Barmaid.
  22. The Informed Traveler: Off course Five Star Alliance focused.
  23. Red Room ChroniclesLong before Marriott entered the blog sphere, Rob Safuto was blogging about Marriott hotels around the world.
  24. Urban Diner. Andrew Morrison is a local food critic who blogs about the Vancouver culinary scene, and he never misses a beat on local hotel happenings.
  25. Vacant Ready by a Canadian hotel professional Chris Clarke, presently based in Dubai, who had set up Bed Jump, Hotel Beds, Hotel Splash and Hotel Throne, Hotel Bathrooms exposed successfully and then sold the concept to Hotels By City.
  26. Views from A Corner Suite
  27. Waiter Rant. Musings of a? Yes, you guessed right: Waiter. His book Waiter Rant is  out and he had to give up his anonimity and I took the liberty of using the nice cover photo to enhance this post.

From time to time you see me doing a bit of updating here

Last edited by gje on December 13, 2016

High Five (3): Back to Hotels, African Cities and Art

Gorilla High Five

My High Five no 2 are for:

  1. 11 Bizarre Hotels That Will Knock Your Socks Off, most of them featured at my Unusual Hotels page or on the site Unusual Hotels of the World One minus in the post: I know that “Amsterdam” always draws visitore to your post, but this time the Dock Crane hotel room is actually situated in Harlingen (about 2 hours driving from Amsterdam and without proper Public Transport and approximately half way between Amsterdam and Hamburg in Germany:-).
  2. 10 Insanely Beautiful Hotels Worth Traveling For
  3. 5 African Capitals You Should See in Your Lifetime.
  4. 7 Bizarre Tours You’d Actually Sign Up For…Maybe.
  5. The efforts of Esmé Vos going into the new Hotel Review Site Mapplr.

For some picks I was inspired by the Travel Subgroup of Reddit.

About Happy Hoteliers High Five

A high five is a celebratory gesture made by two people, each raising one hand to slap the raised hand of the other — usually meant to communicate mutual satisfaction to spectators or to extend congratulations from one person to another. The arms are usually extended into the air to form the “high” part, and the five fingers of each hand meet, making the “five”, thus the name.(High Five on wikipedia)

I will not publish it on a scheduled date. I will publish it each time when I have found five persons or sites or posts that I deem worthy a High Five. It even may imply me echoing old news here.

If you want to draw my attention to a post you may e-mail me at gje[at]hetnet.nl or give me a message at Twitter

About The New High Five Logo
I miss a large part of my right hand thumb. Technically I am not even able to offer a High Five: Its more of a High 4 and a half:-)

The Gorilla hand looks closest to my right hand with the small thumb. The photo is from a sculpture by Lisa Roet, born in Australia and currently living and working in Melbourne. She had a couple of her sculptures exhibited at the annual The Hague Sculpture. One sculpture inspired me for my post The Finger of Suspicion.

Presently The Hague Sculpture is being built up again and so the circle is full again.

I am looking forward to bring you a timely photo tour of the 2008 edition which is interesting again from what I have seen.