Awesome New Thing of the Week: Week 5

I have been doing a lot of traveling this summer (more on that to come later) and have come across a fantastic new website for searching for hotels (and flights, too, but the hotel part is the awesome part) called Hipmunk.com. 

I know what you are thinking - "not another search site; they are all the same...", but wait, this one is different. I promise. (and no, I'm not being paid to write any of this)

If you are anything like me, you probably search on Kayak or Trivago or something for hotels you can afford, then you go to Trip Advisor and see if they are any good, right?   You look on Trip Advisor for key words like "clean", "helpful staff", "comfortable beds" and always "good location"... but then if you are even more like me, you start to wonder about the location part....  Did Alice from Geneva think the location was good because it was close to museums and art galleries when my "good location" would be close to restaruants and bars and other places where I could have a delicious drink at 11am because I'm on holiday?  

Here's where Hipmunk.com comes in - their map solves the age old problem of location, location, location by displaying a heatmap over the city map to show where certain types of things may be congregated.  Wow that's a shocking bad explaination - just look at the image below:

See the heat map hot spots?  I've asked it to show me where the bars and nightlife are in Oslo and now I can pick a hotel near one of the hot spots.  You can also ask it to show you where restaurants, shopping, general tourism sites (like landmarks and major attractions) and casinos are congregated and it will generate a different heat map for each category.  Awesome, eh?? 

I'm off to Oslo tomorrow - let's hope Hipmunk has advised me well!