Have you ever gone to your hotel room and thought "hey, this rinky dink room wasn't at all like the photo on the website!" (I'm looking at you, Boston Omni Parker House Hotel). Well, a website named Oyster has stepped up to the task of taking actual honest-to-goodness (not photoshopped for brochures) photos of hotels. Surprisingly, a lot of the hotel rooms - especially the expensive ones I never stay at - are really nice looking, so it's kind of a fun way to gawk at hotels you'd never stay at ...
So far Oyster only has a limited number of hotels in just a few cities* but photos of the one I've stayed at, the Embassy Suites Hotel on Paradise Road in Las Vegas looked exactly like what I remembered. They should step it up a notch and maybe accept user submitted photos (this being Web 2.0 and all).
Link - Thanks Leah!
*Too bad they didn't have photos of the rinky dink room I stayed in at the BOPH - it was literally the size of a closet! And actually the experience is quite useful: whenever I read reviews of a hotel at TripAdvisor, Expedia or similar websites, I always look up the Omni Parker - that way, I can gauge how much of the review is plain BS.
My BOPH story is actually a little bit more than just about a small room. Now, the room WAS very small. How small? How about you can't close the bathroom door if the front door was open. Or that you could almost touch both of the walls with your arms stretched out?
It was very late when we checked in and when we saw the size of the room, my wife and I talked to the front desk. We got the room changed by a really nice lady, but about half an hour later, the night manager nixed the change saying that there was no more room left at the hotel. Everything was sold out, he rudely said and then refused to talk to us. We tried to argue (we had booked it through hotels.com - which was a cheaper price. Hotels.com refused to back us up on it - incidentally that was the last time I used the website). By then it was 2:30AM and we got too tired and slept. At 6AM, the lovely sound of jackhammers woke us up.
I talked to the day manager, and got us changed to a different room (sold out? What sold out? There were plenty of rooms). I ended up extending my stay at the BOPH because my trip lasted longer than expected.
Now, this was several years ago, but I still remember the experience and won't stay there ever again.
So why not a fake spotless bedroom? I think you'll be surprized at tomorrow's pictures.