The Business section of today’s New York Times has an article on a new travel web site called Oyster.com that is a welcome change and I think is going to be a big hit. Their whole thing is that instead of relying on the overblown descriptions and retouched photos provided by the hotels promotional department and web sites, Oyster relies instead on 45 full-time reviewers who stay in hotels incognito and post their own reviews and photographs.
“Oyster is meant to be very simple, easy, straightforward and truthful, where what you see is what you get,” said Elie Seidman, chief executive of Oyster.
What a novel idea.
NYTimes.com
Selling Travel With Words, Not Images
And this is really cool, - a regular feature, Photo Fakeouts, contrasts promotional photos from hotels with photos taken from the same perspective by Oyster reviewers.
Check it out, I think the world is ready for this and Oyster is gonna kick some big time travel industry butt