This is the last part of the travel trends series (for now), where we took UpTake data related to hotel rates and occupancy for holiday weekends, and tried to find some patterns in the booking habits of travelers in the major metro areas. In Part I, we looked at San Francisco, in Part II at New York, and in Part III at Chicago.

Hard Rock Hotel, San Diego

In this last post we’ll be discussing the hotel booking trends for the 4th of July and Labor Day weekends for San Diego and Anahiem.

The first data sample was taken on June 19, and showed San Diego hotels either sold out or going at a premium for the 4th of July. The Hard Rock Hotel SD was sold out, and the Westin was charging $40 over standard non-holiday weekend booking rates of $159.

The trends in Anahiem were running the other way, with rates at both Disney’s Grand Californian ($425/$480)) and the Westin South Coast Plaza ($118/$144) well below non-holiday weekend rates.

This trend continued on to the next sample on June 26, which showed the Westin also sold out, in addition to the Hard Rock. And in Anahiem, the bottom dropped out of the 4th of July rates, with Disney’s Grand Californian at $310, as compared to $480 for non-holiday weekends.

The trend here – as has been for most of the cities covered in this series so far – is that travelers prefer to flock to the big cities for the 4th of July, rather than head for attractions and destinations outside the city.

Moving on to Labor Day, the rates for hotels in San Diego were mostly stable at levels slightly above weekend rates in six data samples taken in between the 4th of July and Aug 6. The rates got a major boost in the next sample on Aug 18, with the Hard Rock pushing up it’s Labor Day booking rates by $30 over the previous $269.

However, this year, Labor Day doesn’t have quite the same punch in San Diego. Not only did the hotels not get sold out, they actually had to drop their rates in the last minute booking window in-between Aug 18 and Labor Day. In sample taken in this period, the rates at the Hard Rock dropped down to $249 and the Westin pegged it back down to $118.

In Anahiem too, demand was high, and Disney’s Grand Californian got sold out as early as July 13, indicating that family vacations to Disneyland for Labor Day weekends are still quite popular.

Overall, 4th of July is a good time to be in San Diego, and you should be booking as early as possible. Not so much for Labor Day, where rates went up and then back down again. In a down year like this one, Labor Day bookings in San Diego need to be done in the period before or after in-between the 4th of July and Aug 18 – if you want the best rate.

Photo by chrislee-cm

Editor’s note: Gene McKenna is one of UpTake’s founders and he believes in the power of the Wiki. Gene sees Wikipedia as a solid information source for travelers’ seeking information about other countries, cities and towns they plan to visit. The problem is he fears wikibullies are going to take over and squash the grass roots, open sourced information which is the basis of Wikipedia and the source of its rich information. This essay is his quest to stop wikibullying. 

Wikipedia is now filled with bullies

I can hardly claim to be a Wikipedia Newbie – my first edit was Feb 18th, 2004 about Cesar Chavez. I’ve probably done a few hundred edits since then on maybe a dozen or two pages, and I have created several pages.

And that experience has taught me that Wikipedia has become a house of bullies.

Speedy Deletion

Back in 2004 Wikipedia was a very friendly place and contributions from just about anyone were welcome. In 2009, I challenge a newbie to create an article on Wikipedia and have that article exist for an entire week. Guaranteed, your article will be marked for “speedy deletion” within about two minutes of its creation.

I’ve had a page deleted for being ‘too commercial’ even when the page was describing a non-profit group of volunteers that have been operating a ski hill for over fifty years. When I put the page back up some Wiki-bully warned me that putting back a deleted page is “a sure way to piss people off around here”- as if I am I am not a person “around here” and as if I shouldn’t be upset that someone deleted my page!

Now that same page, having survived a month of its second life, is marked as “not notable” and may be deleted soon. Perhaps every elitist Wiki-bully learned to ski at Vail or Aspen, but where I am from, Kettlebowl is a pretty notable ski hill.

So I am learning to be a bully too! My photos were being deleted left and right. It didn’t matter if I checked the box that I totally, ultimately swear that this is my own work and I agree to share it with the world. If some Wiki-bully didn’t like it – poof! It was gone. So I have found that if I put it back with a terse comment in the description like “Don’t delete my photo again!!!!” it is more likely to be left undeleted. Now I’m a bully too!

‘Bot Bullies

A good way to tell how bad the bully situation is, is by counting the number of ‘bots’ that edit your page vs the number of humans. A ‘bot’ is a computer program that reads pages and makes changes automatically so a human bully doesn’t even have to bother with you. One bot exists solely to annoy me by changing statements like ’4th of July’ to ’4 July’. The name of this ‘bot’ even indicates that its creator sees himself as a bully – it’s called ‘Smackbot’. I imagine the creator of Smackbot was a kid that no one listened to in high school so now he is going to smack everyone around on Wikipedia. Way to go Smackbot-man!

Complex Rituals

Part of the problem, to be sure, is not that everyone on Wikipedia is a bully. I am sure that most of the heavy Wikipedia users are great people and they mean well. But they may forget that newbies aren’t born knowing the proper communication protocols of the wiki-community nor are they adept at wikipedia’s ridiculously crazy user interface and syntax.

For a newbie, it is not obvious, for example, that if you have a question about why some ‘smackbot’ changed your page or why your article about the greatest raptor conservationist in America is considered Unambiguous advertising or promotion, that the proper thing to do is to go to that person’s (or robot’s?) talk page, look past all the wonderful awards he has won, and edit his talk page to leave a question. (Actually, I still don’t know if that is the right thing to do.)

And if you do edit someone’s talk page, don’t dare get that process wrong, because some Wikipedians have extensive instructions on their talk page about the correct way to write on their talk page and they will clearly be upset if you don’t write on their talk page correctly. At least one of them made a useful widget to help ensure you can write on his talk page correctly.

Of course, dear Newbie, you know that when you edit someone’s talk page you should sign your name by typing ~~~~ – that is obvious, isn’t it? And when you go to upload that photo (that will soon be deleted) and you first login to wikipedia, you will then be told that you should really be logged in to wiki-MEDIA instead. What’s more inviting than having two make two new online accounts in order to contribute?

Britannica

Between the learning curve of Wikipedia culture, the Wikipedia UI and the tolerance of some of its bullies for people not already steeped in that culture … who has time for this?

Wikipedia is dead – the Britannica staff has taken over.

Click here to read Gene’s proposal for how to make Wikipedia more inclusive and Newbie-friendly.

Return to Gene’s Home Page

This is Part III of the Travel Trend posts we’re doing on holiday hotel booking trends in major metro areas, based on UpTake hotel data for room rates and availability. Part I was focused on San Francisco and Part II on New York. In this post, we’re looking at Chicago.

Hyatt Regency Chicago

The first test data sample was taken on June 19, with successive samples all the way upto Aug 30. We’ll be looking at the holiday booking patterns in Chicago for the 4th of July and Labor Day weekends.

All hotels included in the test are 3 or 4 star hotels in Chicago, or in locations suitable for drives out of the Windy City, like Lake Geneva and Wisconsin Dells.

As of June 19, Chicago was still asleep, in so far as it concerns rushing to book hotels for the 4th of July. Room rates for non-holiday weekends booked 4 weeks in advance were higher than the rates for the 4th of July. 

Rate Checks

The Hyatt Regency Chicago was offering a weekend rate of $203/night and $189/night for the 4th of July. For the Omni Chicago, it was $249/$199. For the Hilton Chicago on Michigan Avenue, it was $269/$161. 

It was the same for Lake Geneva and Wisconsin Dells. The Bella Vista Suites in Lake Geneva was offering weekend rates of $349/night as compared to $192 for the 4th of July.  At the Antiques & Lace Inn in Wisconsin Dells, it was $140/$120.

Sold Out by June 26th for the 4th of July

The next sample on June 26 showed Chicago hotels sold out straight. Unlike San Francisco and New York, there is no in-between period in Chicago where rates go up over a period of time before the hotels end up booked solid for the holiday.

So if you’re looking to book Chicago for the 4th of July, do it in the week leading upto but not later than June 19, and you’re still going to get the best rate, as far as timing is concerned.

Labor Day rates remain steady without increase until late August

Moving on to Labor Day, we have data samples from seven rate checks taken in between the 4th of July and Aug 30. In six out of seven samples, rates in Chicago hotels were rock steady – absolutely no movement upwards.

Even in the sample taken on Aug 18, the Hyatt Regency, Omni and Hilton were offering rates of $119, $157 and $134 respectively for Labor Day – all much lower than the non-holiday weekend booking rates. And it was about the same in Wisconsin Dells and Lake Geneva.

The bookings finally started picking up in between Aug 20-30, with hotels in Wisconsin Dells and Lake Geneva jacking up Labor Day rates over the weekend booking rates, which showed Chicago natives booking late for a Labor Day weekend outside the city.

The Bella Vista Suites in Lake Geneva set a $251 rate for Labor Day, in comparison to weekend rates of $193, and for the Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells, it was $190/$170. 

All in all, Chicago hotel bookings for the 4th of July have a cut-off date of June 19, beyond which you’ll be seeing sold out signs, and Labor Day isn’t that big a deal for the hotels. It does pick up a bit for the surrounding getaway drive locations, but only after Aug 18. So if you’re looking at a Labor Day in Chicago, then last minute reservations won’t cost anything extra.

Photo courtesy Hyatt Hotels Corp.

Looks like this business of making passengers sit on the tarmac for hours on end waiting for a flight decision goes far deeper than a consumer beef. 

It appears the current gate system is set up so that airlines can screw each other and smile while they do it. 

Tugs and tails

Case in point: The pilot of the Continental Express flight left sitting on the tarmac in Rochester, Minnesota, all night last month reportedly begged for officials inside the terminal to let her 47 passengers go. Since the toilets stopped working and there were two infants on board, I’m sure she wasn’t sitting cushy in her cockpit world herself. 

Now it’s being revealed that it was a Mesaba Airlines agent (read: wholly owned by Northwest, which is wholly owned by Delta, a.k.a. competitor) who was refusing to open the gate on the grounds they had no TSA folks to screen the passengers, which wasn’t necessary in the first place. 

It boils down to the fact that Continental didn’t have a presence in Rochester, and had to rely on the kindness of its rivals for mercy. Apparently, on August 7, there was no room at the gate. 

“Once the pilot sets his brakes, he’s no longer in control,” Vaughn Cordle, an analyst for the AirlineForecasts consultancy  told Travel Weekly reporters. 

Sure, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood shook his finger at Mesaba for such narrow-mindness, and then he turned around and told Continental senior staff they could have tried harder to help a stranded flight, too. It all  amounts to a big “so what?” among passengers living in that plane for the long haul.  And officials at the Air Transport Association assure that most carriers find a way to get along in situations like this. But the travel industry can squabble among themselves all they like — the cold fact is in this instance, when push came to shove, the rival airline shoved and has likely brought down still more legislation on the industry’s head.

So from the travel industry to Mesaba Airlines: thanks a lot, pal. 

Or in the words of the Continental Express pilot, when told by the disembodied voice on the other end of the intercom she had to sit there, “That’s ridiculous.”

Photography credit: donovanhouse (Flickr)