JohnnyP

Starwood Guest Reviews and Photos: www.StarwoodLobby.com

I was inspired by FTer Muerz's Hyatt Review Site and figured, "Why can't the Starwood community have one of those?"

A buddy and I threw together StarwoodLobby.com for Starwood enthusiasts to come put their reviews about Westins, Sheratons, St. Regis' and the other Starwood brands. We tried to design a site that represented the unique flair for design that we see in Starwood hotels.

What do you think? Obviously, we'd love your feedback (and good reviews)! There are probably more than a few kinks to work out.

www.starwoodlobby.com

gleff

Wow, looks great. One suggestion would be an RSS feed.

JohnnyP

Thanks gleff, we definitely have that capability already built in... I just need to figure out how to turn it on.

cur

Wicked. There is tripadvisor, but majority of the opinions there are the leisure travellers venting that they didn't have everything spoon fed to them.

hopefully it will be a bit more refined on your site. great layout by the way ^

if i can suggest something, have accounts and a count of reviews, so there's some form of credbility between the whiney tourist and the experienced business traveller.

vivrant

Maybe it's just me, but I find the site will be redundant. FT has many, many times more visitors and recognition. Folks will generally post reviews of their trips and Starwood experiences either here, on Trip Advisor or epinions. What compelling reason do I have to post a review of my trip both here and on your site? Maybe you can partner with FT and this sub-board and copy reviews to your site (I'm thinking there might be some property/copyright issue with this)?

All that being said, the site does look well designed and laid out.

slhart

I think it looks amazing! I've stayed at tons of *wood hotels, and will post some reviews. I think it'll be easier to navigate than have to do searches on FT. I hope it does great, and thanks!

Canada Flyer

Great site!

I have also stayed at many *s*t*a*r*w*o*o*d hotels & resorts...I posted a review there, but can't seem to find it...

The design is great. I notice just 1 small thing, and that's in the navagation, all of your links are smallLARGE except for one that says "SUBMITreviews"... Anyways, great page! ^

cur

You are correct to point out reviews, this is a forum, not a review site, so finding information on the starwood website would be better.

Another suggestion, in terms of review layout, when you click on 'read reviews', I think there should be a list of continents, then countries, then provinces/states, then each hotel. I know this means a LOT of dbasing, but if more reviews come in and are listed in chronological order, it would be a headache to find the relevant review.

vivrant

I would suggest to making the front page banner with the bed smaller, and placing the buttons on top of the banner rather than under. This would allow one to quickly navigate to the appropriate section of the site with ease.

I liked the suggestion of searching by location in a drill down fashion beginning by continent. But there should probably be several easy to select methods of search which include by location, free text, and finally a drop down listing only those sites that have already been reviewed.

Sam P. Goodman

I'll have to wait and see how I juggle yet another site, but regardless, your site looks damn good. Nice job.

JohnnyP

StarwoodLobby was never meant to replace FlyerTalk (as if that was possible!!) but to compliment it. In fact, John and I debated for a long time about whether or not to even have forums on the site. In any case, I thought Muerz's Hyatt Review site was a great example of how FT and a review site compliment eachother -- you can get the in-depth Q&A/discussion about a property on FT (albeit with a somewhat convoluted search process) but a quick-shot review of a property with real-life pics on StarwoodLobby. The Hyatt Review site is a sticky on the Hyatt board and allows you to drill down directly to a specific hotel in no time. Eventually, we could even put links on StarwoodLobby reviews to the hotel-specific threads on the boards here.

Once we do get a sizable amount of reviews on the site, we'll build a stronger organizing tool (by city/state/country/brand, etc.). But as cur mentioned, that's a lot of d'basing!

As for reviews, keep 'em coming! We're getting up as fast as we can. Keep in mind that submitted reviews will go through an editing/review process because we want to manage the quality of the site. If reviews posted directly to the site, quality could get out of hand fairly quickly.

vivrant, thanks for your suggestions about the banner and navigation. I'll talk to John about it. The main banner image will rotate based on the "featured review" (usually this will be the latest, best-written, most-in-depth review we've received); and sometimes it may be difficult to find an image that looks good in a thinner panoramic image. <shrug> That was our thought anyway.

Thanks for your support! We love Starwood properties too, so we're eager for the site to continue to grow and stay ad-free forever.

JohnnyP

Oh, the other thing I was going to mention... if you have pics of Starwood hotels, just upload them to a free flickr account with the name of the hotel as a tag (i.e. "westin" and "kierland") and StarwoodLobby will pick it up!

ajnaro

Congratulations! Your site looks great. There may be some overlap with other sites, but each one does its part.

LAX1K to AmWest

I totally agree.. a really nice looking site, and I am sure it's content will fill up in no time. THis would be great for some "surprise" hotels that are better than you expect.. as well as the "disappointments"...

Good job!!!

JohnnyP

Thanks to all of you that are submitting reviews. We're getting them edited and posted as quickly as we can.