...

[plonq]

Since our vacation date is creeping up on us I decided to do some online searching for hotels for our trip.  There is a new(ish) listing site that has been popping up in a lot of ads and billboards, so I decided to give them a try.

http://www.hotelsbycity.ca

My thinking was, "If I'm looking for hotels in a Canadian city, it would make sense to go to a .ca site, right?"

The first search came up blank because when I typed in "Victoria, British Columbia" for the city, it defaulted to "United States" for the country when I hit enter.  O_o

I fixed that, and it found a bunch of listings, with the prices shown in USD.  Great!  Now all I have to do is use a currency exchange site to find out approximately how much it would cost in CAD to stay in a Canadian hotel.  =/  On closer inspection I noticed that the logo at the top of the page says "Hotels By City.com".  These jerks simply bought up the .ca domain and pointed it to their .com domain without changing a single thing.  I think I'll see what Expedia or Travelocity have to offer.  At least they put out the effort to convert the prices for me.

[Edit: In fairness to them I did one more search after posting this entry and their prices came up in both currencies this time, so maybe it was just a hiccough on their site the first time.]

[Double Edit: Not finding a very cheap place to stay. So far the most affordable is Paul's Motor Inn at $93.31 a night. When I lived in Victoria I always regarded that as a place to go drinking, but it never occurred to me that people actually stayed there. Oooh... the Red Lion Inn is only $133 a night. I used to go there to watch the strippers. You could get syphilis just walking in the front door of that place.

Maybe I'll see what's available for B&B]

Comments

[duncandahusky.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's the Best Western Emerald Isle Inn at CDN$73.53/night on Hotels.com . When we stayed in Chilliwack a few years back, the Best Western there was quite nice, and very affordable (well, it was Chilliwack, after all, but still...)

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Chilliwack is a bit cheaper than Victoria <nodnod>. Unless it's changed a lot in the last couple of years, there's not much out there except for pig farms, and all of Vancouver's smog (which drifts up the valley and settles over Chilliwack). It always made for some interesting smells when one was leaving the lower mainland on a holiday.

I'll try Hotels.com though to see what kind of deals they have for Victoria.

[duncandahusky.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that the way I wrote my reply wasn't clear :-) The Best Western Emerald Isle Inn is in Victoria, and the link should go to a listing of hotels in Victoria.

(Dammit, I'm an engineer, not an English major!)

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

That reminds me. I should look into booking hotels too for my upcoming road trip.... although I'm just as tempted to simply see what's available on the way there. That way I can stop where ever without worrying about driving "one more hour" just to get to the reserved hotel.