The best things to do in San Francisco for an amazing trip.

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Are Yelp Reviews Real? I want to buy a review.

March 21st, 2009 · Travel News

As a publisher of San Francisco hotel reviews for many years, we found recent news stories pelting Yelp including San Francisco’s East Bay Express to be very interesting. News outlets including the New York Times and LA Times are considering whether there is any relationship between being a Yelp.com advertiser and getting great reviews on the site. We’ve generally found Yelp recommendations to be better than a “blind walk in”, but always view review sites with a jaunted eye. Several San Francisco businesses reported troubling incidents between the advertising sales staff of Yelp.com and what reviews they might / might not receive. Many reports of the connection of advertising sales with reviews continue in San Jose at this news link.

We’ll be clear – accurate, real reviews are what make the Internet so valuable. Whether the Yelp stories are true or not – it only emphasizes how important it is to separate editorial content and business sales operations for web publishers.

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San Francisco Airport Cutting 75% of Shuttles

March 15th, 2009 · Airport Shuttles

San Francisco Airport Shuttles
If you use airporter type shuttle vans at San Francisco airport, the airport commission wants to change this business radically.

Today – eleven companies offer airport shuttle service at San Francisco airport (SFO). In December 2008, the airport commission proposed eliminating the permit for seven of these companies, leaving you only four to choose from.

This would likely mean higher prices from less competition, and less competition bringing lower service quality. We aren’t big political activists, but this plan concerns us and the need to ensure that visitors to San Francisco can get economical, good door-to-door service outside of the primary BART transit lines. We use the San Francisco airport shuttles, and recommend them highly to our readers – a cut of 75% of the permitted companies would radically change pricing and service levels.

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One Dollar Hotel Rooms in San Francisco – No Joke.

March 14th, 2009 · Hotel Reviews

Orchard Hotel San Francisco
The Orchard Hotel in San Francisco is offering one room per night, beginning on April 1st, 2009 for just one dollar. Yup, a hotel room at a very nice hotel for just a buck. The catch is there is only one per night, you’ll need to call them (call very early in the morning!!!), and there is only one “One Dollar” room per night.

San Francisco hotel prices have been falling with the recession, but a one dollar hotel room is unheard of. Get it if you can. The phone number for this unheard of deal is (415) 362-8878. Operators are standing by!

If the rooms are gone – here’s a good hotel for under $75 which our readers are snapping up – the Opal Hotel in San Francisco.

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Led Zepplin San Francisco

February 13th, 2009 · Airlines, Travel News

Zepplin Airship over San Francisco

Zepplin Airship over San Francisco


A new company is offering amazing and unique zepplin rides over San Francisco. Yup, you heard right – the 1930’s type zepplins are now modernized and sailing over the San Francisco skyline for around $500 per ride (varies based on time / events). You can even fly the zepplin yourself with some basic training. What an amazing / unique idea and something we never would have expected. You can learn more about the San Francisco Zepplin airship here.

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Green Hybrid Tours to Alcatraz: Wind and Solar for Your Trip

January 25th, 2009 · Alcatraz, Green

Alcatraz Tour San Francisco
Alcatraz now has Hornblower tours with a fully green boat. The boat uses wind turbines, solar panels, and hybrid batteries to power many of the ship’s functions. With over 1.4 million people visiting Alcatraz every year – this is a great step to keeping San Francisco Bay clean and pollution free. Many other boats such as the Red & White already use bio-diesel for their Bay cruises.

The new Hornblower boat carries around 160 people and when it is idling – it runs off its hybrid batteries powered by wind, solar, and plug-in. The interior uses LEED approved recycled content as a nice additional touch. Keep in mind – this is just one of the Hornblower fleet in San Francisco to Alcatraz – but a great first step in keeping the Bay green and clean.

sfTravel calls on all of the boat tour companies that tour into or around Alcatraz to adopt reasonable practices to keep San Francisco Bay clean – Blue & Gold, Red & White — what do you have in the works?

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Hey Dude! Want to split my taxi fare? Going green in San Francisco…

November 21st, 2008 · environment, Limousine, san francisco, Taxi

A new business expanding from New York to San Francisco allows airport riders to be matched with companions for their airport shuttle to SFO. The company promises two benefits:

1.) You’ll save money by splitting the fare.
2.) Two in a cab or limo saves carbon emissions and helps the earth.

San Francisco Taxi

It’s a clever concept, but it has some risks. First off – you may just not like who you are paired with. Even the most easy going person when randomly matched with “anyone” may find out they just aren’t a good match.

Second – what if the gal is a flake? Now you’ve paid for a San Francisco taxi or limo and are footing the entire – not half the cost. If you view the second rider as a “bonus” – you’re ok, but the assumption of a 2nd rider may have influenced your choice of transit.

The transit match service Hitchsters – has a business model of a revenue share of San Francisco limousine and town car airport shuttles. By referring you to a specific limo or towncar — they take a cut of your fare. We applaud the clever idea and hope it catches on to some degree. But its in no way a magic 50% off sale — it comes with both risks and potential.

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Screwing the Timeshare Scammers: How we stayed in Maui for pennies.

November 16th, 2008 · timeshare

Timeshares are known worldwide as a purchase so poor, they must pay you $100 or more just to hear the pitch. Horror stories abound of being held virtual prisoner by aggressive salespeople, or even worse the overpaid prices of anyone dumb enough to buy a retail timeshare.

We were dumb enough to attend a timeshare pitch in return for a discounted vacation a few years back. It was a very unpleasant two hours, made even more uncomfortable by the complete a**hole of a salesperson. But it did make me think – is there any way to truly take advantage of this blood-leech industry? And Virginia… it’s not simple… but there is.

Timeshare

These posts will tell the story of just how we turned a hideous two hour sales pitch into a view two bedroom, two full bath, and two kitchen condo on the Maui shore in a top hotel brand. We’ll explain each step in the odossey as we progress through the steps to screwing the timeshare scammers.

Rule #1: Never Buy a New “Car”:
So, most people agonize over new versus used cars. It has always been a dilemma for us whether to save the money on a used car versus the repair risk. Guess what the timeshare salesperson doesn’t want you to know? There is a very active market for “used timeshares”. But the timeshare salespeople definitely know about this market — because they have devised their own protection. There are certain “priveleges” that transfer only for new, versus resale timeshares. These are typically “premium trading” and “points systems” with major hotels. Now the timeshare salesperson needs to speak out of both sides of their mouth: You have “great resale” for your “timeshare investment”, but don’t buy someone else’s resale as you’ll get “much less”. Hmmmm….

Now you might wonder the ratio of a used timeshare, versus a new timeshare. It is STUNNING. For the timeshare we viewed, the approximate retail cost was over $15,000. We easily bought the same timeshare on the resale market for $3,000, and have now –in the difficult economy — seen it for under $1,000. Now why are people paying $15,000 right now today – for something they can’t sell the next day for $0.25 on the dollar? That’s a great question. I believe there are two reasons:

1.) Resale timeshare information is not always easy to find, and many timeshare buyers are not sophisticated computer users.

2.) The timeshare salesperson will make it very easy to buy from them (financing, etc.) – plus the “aura” of your tour and vacation. The resale market is depersonalized, and business-like.

3.) They haven’t found Redweek.com (no this is NOT a promo) – it is a sincere recommendation. Redweek is a virtual Wall Street Journal for the “market” price of resale timeshare deeds; buying just one week rental for one year; and even trading your timeshare for a minimal fee.

Our next posts will discuss the type of timeshare you want to buy, and AVOID — and your next steps to trading to paradise for pennies. Here’s a hint – the San Francisco timeshares are not the best location.

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Travel Horror: Why a taxi is definitely not a towncar.

November 1st, 2008 · Limousine, Taxi

Seattle Taxi
As a frequent traveler – we’ve found airport shuttles to be a great alternative to parking at the airport and offsite airport lots. Parking involves a shuttle anyways, and when we travel with the family and tons of luggage – it’s just too much hassle.

We’ve found – after searching many towncar / limousine companies — a towncar service which takes us from our suburban home to the airport for a reasonable price. But there’s always a cheaper alternative. Taxis charge less – by around 25% – 30% so we thought we’d give it a try.

Our outbound trip to the airport used a towncar. The driver was cleanly, polite, on-time, helpful, and highly professional. We loved the service and it was a great start to the trip. During the trip, we made an online reservation for a taxi service. The price was lower by about $20 which made it worth it – and we’ve used the service before with reasonable quality. We did have a lot of luggage and two children under the age of 6 along with us.
Seattle Limousine

After picking up our luggage, we called the service for our reservation. Phone service was very poor and rude– even questioning why we would be calling. The towncar service was always prompt and helpful. The dispatcher was difficult to communicate with, and had us go to a different level of the airport. The taxi service is not allowed to pick up at the baggage claim – one of the primary conveniences of the towncar.

Phone Call #1: We’re here, where can we meet the driver? : We were put on hold for about five minutes and told the driver (nowhere to be seen) was coming.

Phone Call #2: Where should we go? : Called the driver – put on hold again. Told to go to different airport level.

Phone Call #3: There is no cab. : He’s there, can’t you see him?

After around fifteen minutes of this round-robin, the driver (who was polite) finally arrived after driving past us at about 50 miles per hour. He explained that the van who was to pick us up had picked up other ready passengers to make a quick buck, and that luckily he was already at the airport zone.

So we saved $20, but not sure the hassle was worth it. Towncar service was enjoyable and impeccable — I think it might be worth the extra cost. Taxi service was – um, not great. What do you think — is “ok” service worth a 25% discount in these “troubled economic times”? We’ve definitely already shopped around for the cheapest towncar service.

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Saving money on vacation: Best strategies to rent cheap (luxury) cars.

October 28th, 2008 · Rental Cars

Rent Cars Cheap

Even in these troubled economic times – people are on vacation. You might have purchased your vacation months ago – or just need a vacation. Now that you are about to take off to Arizona, Hawaii, California, or Florida — you want to control the expenses that are not already “sunk costs” like your airfare. One of the easiest places to save money is on your rental car. If you’ve got time– maybe at work (grin) – you can get a very cheap car, and not drive a junky econo-box. The photo above is our Chrysler 300 with leather seats in Maui – for which we are paying under $20 per day. Here are our top five tips to getting a disgracefully cheap deal on a rental car:

1.) Forget Avis and Hertz. You won’t get a good deal from either one. We’re here to play with the “Tier Two” car rental companies like Alamo and Dollar. Alamo and Dollar compete on price, not service and are ready to deal. Budget is really just Avis in disguise, so don’t bother there either.

2.) Shop around like crazy: Here’s the dirty secret of car renting. You can make a reservation with every company – with no credit card – and there is no obligation. In fact, you can (avoid) make multiple reservations with the same company using various email addresses and family members. We do advise to cancel all un-needed reservations and never maintain more than one reservation with a single car company. Net-net — shop around and reserve until you do better – then cancel. Since there can also be “outages” on rental cars – its good to always have a 2nd backup reservation with a 2nd rental company.

3.) Coupon codes rule. There are the deals you can get on the web which are good – but the real deals can be from coupon codes. One of the best places for coupon codes is at your local Costco. When you visit Costco, there is a “travel guide magazine” which contains two full pages of rental car codes from every major rental car company.

4.) Check your reservation weekly. If you spend just five minutes per week reviewing your reservation and how pricing has changed (ie make it again) — you can save almost 30-50%. Prices do and will change. Take advantage.

5.) Hotwire and Priceline are your friends, but lock you in. Avoid being locked in, but when all else fails, try Hotwire (prepaid, you don’t know the rental car company) and Priceline (same scenario). For priceline – bid 30%-50% below the lowest price you have been quoted. You will prepay; be locked in; and need a great deal to make it worth it. Priceline and Hotwire also charge add-on fee’s. You can use this method to access the lowest rates, when you don’t have the needed coupon codes.

In summary – rental cars are an industry with wildly different prices that you can leverage by “playing the market”. Check prices often, and you can save a bundle and get an awesome vehicle.

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United Airlines – Is it as bad as folks say?

October 28th, 2008 · Airlines

San Francisco SFO Airport
We recently rode United Airlines on a cross-country trip after a long time away from this airline. They’re rated low for service and have amazing fee’s for just about anything. It is totally true that there is zero food; $125 charge for a bag over 51 pounds, and you can pay extra for 5 inches more legroom in “economy plus”. Since there is a charge for every bag – the overhead compartments are overflowing with bags – everyone brings a nice big carry-on rolling bag to avoid the baggage fee’s. The service is pretty indifferent, but we saw something that gave us new hope in mankind for the airline industry.

The woman sitting behind me was flying with two young children around 2 years and 6 years. Just as the plane taxied away from the airport — one of the children announced they “had to go”. The passenger asked the stewardess to use the bathroom, but she verified they were closed until we reached cruising altitude — 30 minutes or more. I saw disaster on its way, but one of the United stewardesses was so kind to actually STOP THE PLANE so this little boy could use the bathroom. I was amazed they were so considerate and the two minute “quickie” bathroom break made the flight a lot easier for the little boy and nearby passengers (smell-wise) such as myself.

United Airlines flight attendant on this San Francisco airport– Chicago flight: I applaud your consideration.

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