This folder lists mobile sites opperated by hotel chains covering a single brand or a family of related hotel brands.

What's This?

Hilton

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
mobile.usablenet.com/mt/www1.hil... (xhtml-mp)

Search for Hilton Hotels and Hilton Garden Inns. Check rates and availability and make reservations (credit card required). View and change existing reservations.


Screenshots

Hilton - Start Page Hilton - Hotel Detail Page


What's This?

Marriott

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
marriott.com/wireless/default.mi (xhtml-mp)

Marriott Hotel Listing

Marriott's mobile webapp covers all of the company's hotel brands; Marriott , JW Marriott , Renaissance, Courtyard, Residence Inn, Fairfield Inn, TownePlace Suites and SpringHill Suites. And it's international, you can check availability and book rooms in 58 countries.

Other features of Marriott Mobile include online access to your Rewards account, basic driving directions and information of Airport Buses and Taxis, including approximate fares.

Phone numbers are in click-to-call format and the site shows live room availability with prices and allows you to book a room. Booking does require a credit card and all the hassle that entails. But if you are a Marriott Rewards online member and have a saved credit card on file with Marriott you can zip right through the booking process by just entering your Rewards number and online password - nice. One thing I'd like to see that's missing though is a click to call number right on the booking page so that non-members can complete their booking by phone.

 


What's This?

Holiday Inn

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
holidayinn.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Find hotels, book rooms and view loyalty plan status for Holiday Inn's in the US and Canada.


What's This?

Westin Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.starwoodhotels.com/westin/inde... (xhtml-mp)

Make and manage reservations at any of Westin's 169 hotels and resorts in 31 countries, look up hotels by location, and accessing your Westin customer account. Source Mobility.mobi


What's This?

Hyatt Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
hyatt.com (xhtml-mp)

Hyatt Mobile Homepage

Hotel booking sites are traditionally the usability black hole of the mobile web. Finding and booking a hotel at the last minute is something every traveler occasionally has to do. The mobile web seems like an ideal way to do this, yet the major booking sites and hotel chains do not seem to have much interest in capturing this enormous opportunity.  Most mobile hotel sites appear to be thrown together with no real usability testing or understanding of the unique nature of mobile based data entry.

Hyatt's mobile is better than most.  You can search for, view and cancel existing reservations. A neat thing I haven't seen before on a mobile hotel site is the ability to check in or out online. Both these functions are well designed and require a minimum of data entry, just your reservation number and name. Members of Hyatt's Gold Passport loyalty program can check their account details and reward points balance. It's even possible to enroll in Gold Passport on the mobile site.

To me the most important feature of a mobile hotel site is the ability to find and book a hotel room on the road quickly and with a minimum of hassle. Booking a room is usually the most problem ridden area on hotel sites.  The root of the problem is the requirement of hotels for full credit card information at time of booking, which in turn means completing an endless form. I have to wonder why credit card companies haven't implemented a mobile PIN system like PayPal and Google Checkout use. It's so much easier to make purchases with PayPal or Checkout on mobile sites with just your phone number and a PIN. For that matter, why don't hotels accept PayPal?


What's This?

Choice Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
m.choicehotels.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Search for rooms in Cambria Suites, Clarion, Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn, Econo Lodge and Rodeway Inn hotels in the US and around the world. For some reason, all the mobile hotel sites I seen have major usability problems. The Choice Hotels site is one of the better ones. It lets you check rates and availability and book a room online. Booking requires detailed credit card information which is difficult to enter on a phone keypad. It would be easier to make a phone call and both the main Choice Hotels b0oking number and the individual hotel's phone numbers areclick to call!


What's This?

La Quinta

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
m.lq.com (xhtml-mp)

La Quinta operates over 700 medium priced Inns and Suites in North America.  La Quinta provides free high speed Internet access at most location. The La Quinta mobile site lets you make an online hotel reservation, find  La Quinta Inns and Suites hotels, or join the Returns hotel rewards program.

Site hangs on the initial splash screen if geolocation fails or the share location request is denied!


What's This?

Days Inn

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
daysinn.com (xhtml-mp)

Part of the Wyndham Hotels Group, Days Inn is an international chain of budget motels. This site lets you search for and book rooms at Days Inns in the  US and Canada and manage existing reservations.

It's easy to find available rooms and there is considerable information about the amenities of each property and individual rooms. Booking using a phone keypad is quite difficult because Wyndham requires completing a form with 12 required fields. Fortunately there is a click to call number for each hotel so you can always book with aphone call. You need to use  a smartphone or Opera Mini to access this site thanks to some very large pages, up to 250  KB. Most feature phones can only handle pages under 20 to 50  KB.


What's This?

Omni Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
mobile.usablenet.com/mt/www.omni... (xhtml-mp)

Omni Hotels Finding and booking hotels at the last minute is something every traveler has to do occasionally. The mobile web seems like an ideal way to do this yet mobile hotel sites seem to all be horrible. Omni's is actually fairly good. The site promises to help you find a hotel, make and view reservations, do online check in and view your rewards program details for the luxury Omni Hotels chain in the US, Canada and Mexico. I tried using it to check availability at the San Francisco Omni. Actually booking was a bit of a hassle because the site requires full credit card information; name billing address, card number and expiration date plus a phone number and email address. No problem, the hotel's phone number is on the mobile page I'll just call the hotel and book - except that the number is not click to call! How dumb is that? You can avoid having to enter your CC details by registering in advance on Omni's web site.


What's This?

Ramada

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
ramada.com (xhtml-mp)

Another one of Wyndham Group's hotel brands, Ramada operates mid priced hotels in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. However this particular site is for North America only. Site design, UI and features are the same as for the the other Wyndham sites like Days Inn.


What's This?

Super8

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
super8.com (xhtml-mp)

Super8, which claims to be  the worlds largest budget hotel chain, is a  franchise owned by Wyndham Hotel group.  The mobile site uses the same template and has the same features as the sites for Wyndham's other brands. See the Day's Inn listing for details.


What's This?

Radisson

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
radisson.mobi (xhtml-mp)

Radisson's site lets you browse a directory of hotels around the world, view hotel amenities and photos and make reservations. Phone numbers are provided and are  click to call.  The only booking option is by credit card which requires entering too many details to be usable on mobile.  There needs to be a stored credit card system or the ability to use a more mobile friendly form of payment like PayPal.


What's This?

Loews Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
loewshotels.com/m/ (xhtml-mp)

View current specials, check availability and book rooms at Loews Hotels in the US and Canada. Hotel listings include description and amenities, photos, street address, maps and click to call numbers.


What's This?

Travelodge

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
travelodge.com (xhtml-mp)

Travelodge is a chain of franchised hotels owned by Wyndham Group, the largest operator in the world.  This site offers availability search and booking for Travelodge properties in the U.S. and Canada.


What's This?

HowardJohnson

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
hojo.com (xhtml-mp)

Search and book rooms at Howard Johnson hotels, a mid-priced North American chain of restaurants and hotels. HoJo's as it's often called is owned by the Wyndham Group and it's mobile site is identical in features and function to thoese of the other Wyndham properties.  See the Day's Inn review for details.


What's This?

Best Western

Content: ****  Usability: XX
mobile.usablenet.com/mt/www.best... (xhtml-mp)

BestWestern MobileBestWestern.com detects mobile browsers and redirects to a mobile site where you can find and book hotels in the Best Western chain, which operates in the United States, Canada and Australia. Like just about every mobile hotel booking site I've every seen, this one has some pretty horrendous usability problems.

Things start fairly well with a search form where you enter the city and dates you want to book and then choose the state and country from a drop down. The date fields expect input as MM/DD/YYYY (the slashes are required) and are pre-populated for a one night stay starting two weeks from today. A better design for mobile would be separate numeric-only fields for day, month and year. I also think users booking from a phone are more likely to want a room for tonight, not weeks in the future.

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What's This?

Baymont Inns

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
baymontinns.com (xhtml-mp)

Baymont is a North American mid-priced hotel chain owned by the Wyndham Hotel Group. The Baymont mobile site is identical in design (except for the logo) to the other Wyndham brands like Days Inn.


What's This?

Microtel

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
microtelinn.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Microtel is Wyndham Group's franchised chain of business oriented budget hotels.  The Microtel mobile site shares its basic design with the sites of other Wyndham brands.  It has availability search, online booking and reservation management.


What's This?

Wingate

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
wingateinns.com (xhtml-mp)

Wingate, Wyndham Group's chain of mid-priced hotels targeted at Business travelers shares its mobile website design with the other brands in the Wyndham family. It lets you search foe and book hotels and manage existing reservations.


What's This?

Hawthorn Suites

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
hawthorn.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Part of the Wyndham Hotel Group, Hawthorn is a mid-priced all-suite hotel chain.  The mobile site lets you find and book available rooms and manage existing reservatios.


What's This?

Knights Inn

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
knightsinn.com (xhtml-mp)

Knights Inn is another of Wyndham Group's budget motel chains.  Except for branding and logo the Knights Inn site looks and works like its corporate sister sites. See the Days Inn review for details.


What's This?

Destination Hotels

Content: ***  Usability: XXX
m.destinationhotels.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Destination Hotels Mobile

Destination Hotels is a 30 property U.S. chain with hotels on the east and west coasts and in Colorado and Hawaii.  The site is a simple directory of properties with several pages of information, a map and photo for each one. There is no online booking or availability information but direct click to call numbers are provided for each hotel.  A major usability flaw is that the "Home Page" link on individual hotel pages doesn't lead to the Destination Hotels Home page but only to the first listing page for that hotel leaving stuck there with no easy way to get back to the listing of all hotels.


What's This?

Extended Stay Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
mobile.extendedstay.com/ (xhtml-mp)

Check availability and prices, book rooms and view your reservations at Extended Stay Hotels in the US and Canada.  Hotel listings include photos, directions and click to call phone numbers. Source: Mobility.mobi


What's This?

Accor Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
accor.iogw.com/?IO_LANG_ID=en_US (xhtml-mp)

Search and book book rooms at Accor Groups hotels around the world.  This site covers the 600+  hotels in Accor's mid-range and luxury brands; Sofitel, Novatel, Mercurie and SuiteHotel.  It would be one of the better hotel booking sites except that searches often come up empty. A few minutes later the same search delivers dozens of results


What's This?

Ibis Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXX
accor.iogw.com/ibis/?IO_LANG_ID=... (xhtml-mp)

Mobile search and booking for Accor Group's economy Ibis brand which has 800 hotels, mostly in Europe. Nicely designed site although the search facility seems a little erratic often returning no results only to start working a few minutes or hours later.


What's This?

Historic Hotels

Content: ****  Usability: XXXX
historic-hotels.mobi/ (xhtml-mp)

Historic Hotels of the Rockies is an association of heritage lodging establishments in the US Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming. All the hotels were constructed between 1862 and 1939 and are listed, or are eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic places.

The mobile site has photos, maps, descriptions of amenities, historic information and click to call numbers and email addresses for each establishment.


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What's This?
QR Code
It's a QR (Quick Response) Code containing the URL of WapReview Mobile. Snap it with your phone's QR Code reader to go to the WapReview mobile site.

Ratings Key :

Content - 0-5 *'s indicating the quality of the site's writing, depth, timeliness and accuracy.

Usability - 0-5 X's indicating the usability of the site on a mobile device, based on ease and intuitivness of navigation and lack of excessive scrolling through ads etc. to reach main content.