New Website Room 77 Helps Match You Up with Your Hotel Room Crush

If you ever stayed in a great hotel but got stuck in a room with a lousy view or near a noisy elevator, there's now a way to avoid those dud digs. Unlike sites like TripAdvisor that focus on the hotel in general, new website Room 77, which launches today, offers a hotel room database and search engine for three-star-and-up properties.

Founder Brad Gerstner was staying at a Caribbean hotel and got room envy when he saw another amazing spot in the resort. He put its number�77�in his BlackBerry. He started to add his favorite rooms to the list, and his friends would ask for it when they'd go on trips. Room 77 was born.

So far, the website has more than 425,000 hotels in 16 U.S. cities and London, but the plan is to go global. It's easy to use: Type in the hotel name, like Andaz 5th Avenue, set your room preferences�floor height, view, elevator proximity and connecting/non-connecting. Then it spits out matches fitting your hotel-crashing needs. Click on a suggested room, and the site generates a virtual room-window view using Google Earth and a Google Maps layout of the hotel floor.

Though you can't book directly on the site, Room 77 links to the hotel's reservations engine and has a "request a room" button that offers tips on how to score a specific room. It also will be interactive, eventually allowing guests to rate rooms and submit photography of the spaces.

A free iPhone app is available as well. It'll come in handy when you're at check-in and get a room assignment. You can quickly type in the number and the app will give you a thumbs-up or down, depending on whether the room adheres to your preferences. Then you can request a room with a killer view on the spot.

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