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Lonely Planet's Haystack Finds the (Hostel) Needles

January 30, 2007 at 9:45 AM | 4 Comments

Accurately summing up how it sometimes feels trying to find a good hotel to book (until, of course, you check out what we tell you here at HotelChatter), Lonely Planet travel publishers have just launched an accommodation booking site called Haystack. Starting off with just 900 hotels and hostels from around 40 countries, you can't find everything you're looking for yet--but they say it's coming.

The site's marketing is all based around the "you can soooo trust us" approach:

It's our own online accommodation booking service, especially created for travellers by travellers ... All Haystack properties are handpicked by Lonely Planet authors then reviewed and recommended to join Haystack.

Still when we did a search for hotel rooms, not hostels (you can pick either one), for three cities--Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Rio de Janeiro--Haystack promptly turned up hostel options for all three. So we hope some hotel picks come along soon.

Now, whether you want to bunk down in the kind of places Lonely Planet guidebook writers stay (the word is that their payments don't stretch to any kind of luxury) is another question, but the theory's good.

Related Stories:
· Lonely Planet Launches Haystack [Lonely Planet]