I ran across Tu Tu’ Tun Lodge today. It interested me not only because of the locale but the name sounded a bit Mayan (it is however an indian name after the Tu Tu’ Tune Rogue indians). It’s quite the opposite of Guatemala and the Mayan Riviera however.

The lodge is located in the rural southwest corner of Oregon, 40 miles from the California border. It’s perched on the Rogue River 7 miles from the Pacific Ocean. If you wanted a location to get away from it all and have a life altering experience I’d say that this is a place that could make that happen. While it doesn’t appear to be a typical theme room it makes you want to stay and experience each room.

One I’d specifically like to take in is the Chinook Suite as it has a row of windows that meet in a corner that overlooks the Rogue River. This would be a wonderful place to soak in the area or just sit and read a book. The Inn isn’t for the thrifty traveler as a King room with a fireplace will run you from $180-$300 a night depending on the season. If you have a special occasion coming up however this would make a great romantic getaway or even if you just wanted to treat yourself to a day or two without any ringing phones or pressing deadlines.

The hotel and web site appear beautiful, however the ugly Flash quickly shows it’s head as you try to view each of the impeccably adorned rooms. When you drill down far enough to see one of these beautiful rooms and you try to click back as you loose the room navigation you go back to an outdated splash screen. Instead you can do some index finger calisthenics by clicking ‘Rooms > One King Bed > Room Name’ and then going through the process all over again. This is really such a shame as I’m so eager to look through each room.

- 38 HTML error
-CSS passed.
-Failed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site an C. It’s really too bad as it wouldn’t take much to make the site more usable and accessible. It’s just another case of Flash being miss-used. The whole site is done in Flash and prevents me from bookmarking or adding links to various pages. A little semantic markup and tableless design along with a restructuring of the site could make it much more user friendly.

As always I look for three navigation items when reviewing a site, accomodations, rates and photo gallery. While there are no links for rates or photo gallery. It did however have a link for lodging which seems to fit better than accommodation for this more rustic getaway.

A couple of years ago I was able to get a little taste of the beauty that is in Canada. I drove from Bathurst , New Brunswick to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was a beautiful drive with a stop in Shediack for some crab cakes and planked Salmon. Not only was the food wonderful but the scenery was breathtaking.

All those memories came flooding back as I found this amazing inn called the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, B.C. Canada which is on the west coast. The first shot of the inn’s website transports you to a cool, crisp mountain resort surrounded by awe inspiring scenes everywhere you turn. You see an imposing mountain range ringed by a pristine forest of pine trees. Then peeking out of the forest edge is a storied resort overlooking the waterfront. To the each side is a beach that whispers of kayaks and watercraft trailing through the nearby waters. Your imagination runs wild and the tombs of stories that could be told about this area rush to your minds’ forefront.

The Inn’s web site is very attractive overall with a nice clean layout and soft colors. There is a tendency to get a bit wordy at times and you have to guess at times at what text is a link. The main Flash image is beautiful but can make you feel a bit dizzy at times.

For some reason the chose to go against the norm with their navigation as well. A rule for all lodging websites are that the main menu should contain accommodations, rates, and a photo gallery. While they do have a rates links they’ve substituted an explore the inn for accommodations. Remember Steve Krugs’ addage, “Don’t Make Me Think.” The main Flash video seems to substitute for a photo gallery as well. As a potential guest I want to see what the options are for room and board as well as the price associated with each. I shouldn’t have to wonder where these are and how to get there.

Looking into their code I can see they’ve gone the extra mile to make their markup standout as well as the front-end images. Their site does use nicer tableless markup however they haven’t got things quite nailed down to where the pages will validate.

- 12 HTML error
- 1 CSS error.
-Failed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site an B.

Even though Ive spent years living in Idaho I’ve never had the opportunity to venture up into the pan-handle of Idaho. Coeur d’Alene is a beautiful place from pictures I’ve seen and people I’ve talked to. It looks like an amazing, somewhat untouched area with still a bit of pristine beauty about it.

Nestled on the lakes’ edge is the Coeur d’Alene Resort. It captures your imagination at the first glimpse and you’re wisked away to enjoying a peacful afternoon on a whitewashed adirondack chair wrapped in a woolen blanket next to your someone special reading a book and sipping a warm drink. You notice the clouds sweep across the sky and a deer peer out of a clearing surrounded by grand pine trees.

If you’re a golf fan you’ve got to check out their local golf course as it is the only course I’ve seen where one of the holes is on an island in the middle of the lake. You enjoy a leisurly boat ride over to the island to sink the put if you’re good enough to be able to land your ball on the green.

Their web site is layed out as well as their property. It’ very fresh and simple to view and navigate. I also viewed their source and while their code is older and depricated there is only one validation error on the main page. This is a great chance to make an excellent web site nearly perfect. Out of all the travel/hotel sites I’ve evaluated this has got to be one of the cleanest outside and in. Kudos to The Coeur d’Alene Resort and their web staff!

- 1 HTML error
- 1 CSS error.
-Passed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site an A-.

The Reef Playacar on the Mayan Riviera looks like a wonderful place to stay with plenty of suna dn fun. Like many resorts they cator to the all inclusive crowd as well as pay as you go. Their property has two cerulean swimming pools a jacuzzi, a kid’s pool and club house, with all kinds of activities including dance lessons, water basketball, water polo, tennis cours, sailboats, kayaking, scuba, windsurfing, snorkeling and bicycles. You name the activity and chances are The Reef can accomodate you.

Now if only their web site was that accomodating. Before we start looking at ways to improve the site, they get kudos right off for having an image gallery available right from the top of the page. From there though you get lost as the page navigation is only at the bottom of the page. The site has some wonderful images, but it needs a visual and code overhaul to make it easier for people to find out about their lucious property.

After quickly reviewing their site they weighed in with a number of issues on the main page.
- 45 HTML errors
-CSS passed.
-Failed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site a C.

There is so much potential that I hope someday is realized with this site.

While waiting in a doctors office waiting room I picked up a travel magazine and started thumbing through it as I’m always interested in new and exciting places to visit. I came across an ad for Almay Ranch in Coffee Creek, California.

I’ve never heard of the place before, but it reminded me a bit of home and thought I’d share it with ya’ll.

- 14 HTML errors
- 32 CSS errors.
-Failed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site an C for form and a C function.

Today I found a new place that I’d like to explore, it’s called Tween Waters Inn on Captiva Island in Florida. From the views painted on their web site Tween Waters is a place you could loose yourself in. Forget all the nagging bosses, ringing phones and screaming children, you can just go lay on the beach and sip fruity drinks, read a book and forget the rest of the world existed. However if you crave a bit of adventure they have a wonderful spa, beautiful golf course, all the standard water sports or sea plan rides to explore the area.

Their site is one of those that looks pretty good on the outside, it’s light and airy and makes you feel as if your almost there.

When we look at what’s inside that counts their site needs an overhaul as there is table based layout and old deprecated code. They could increase their search engine rankings, reduce their file size and load times with a good overhaul of their front-end code.

They weighed in with:
- 38 HTML errors
-CSS passed.
-Failed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site a C+.

Found a great site today. While it may not be the cheapest, it is sure to be a trip to remember. The Bora Bora Lagoon Resort and Spa is part of the Orient Express franchise and radiates luxury and sophistication.

At first glance their web site seems to match their level of sophistication, but spending more than a passing glance on the site you start to notice some deficiencies. Two of the most important items to have easily available is the booking form on the primary and secondary screens and to have the photo gallery as readily accessible. Overall from my T1 connection here in the U.S. the site seems a bit slow to access their booking engine one click away. Also they have the obligatory flash photo stream on the front page that goes no where when you click it. What an opportunity is missed to send people to a nice photo gallery.

They show 56 html errors on the first page with a valid css style sheet. Diving into their source code reveals many opportunities to clean up their code and speed up their overall design. In their code you’ll find:

• deprecated tags
• Bloated internal JavaScript
• in-line styles
• deprecated attributes
• table-based layout
• overall poorly laid out source code

All this shows why their YSlow score is an F (56). I would expect a bit more from such a reputable company as the Orient Express. It also fails the section 508 usability tests for patrons with disabilities.

Overall I would give the site a C and possibly a B just because of an impeccable product and brand. However I would love to give this site a makeover to increase the speed, accessibility and usability.

The Greenbrier is a magnificent hotel that I can’t wait to stay at. It’s intrigued me ever since I first browsed upon it’s pages.

“The Greenbrier is an award-winning resort located in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. As a National Historic landmark, The Greenbrier’s classic architecture, exquisite interior design, carefully sculpted landscape, impeccable service and outstanding amenities have hosted distinguished guests from around the world since 1778″ - The Greenbrier Web Site

http://www.greenbrier.com/

The Grand America in Salt Lake City is an amazing hotel. It stands out in both structure, amenities and service. The hotel truly is grand, hearkening back to yesteryear when gentlemen wore top hats and ladies wore ball gowns. My company has had banquets at the Grand Hotel and we were very impressed with every aspect of the hotel.

While there are many sites that talk about the hotel in terms of its amenities we at Half Nut choose to focus more on how they present themselves to the world via the World Wide Web. Our job is to review their site and help them find places they can improve. Our reviews are never meant to degrade but only serve as a resource to make travel better for all.
The Grand Hotel’s web presence at times is very grand and at other times seems a bit less.

A quick search on Google provides the first hit which takes you right to their highly functional web booking engine. Although it is Flash based and a little tightly packed a common user should be able to make a booking without too many problems.
Going directly to the booking engine seemed a bit awkward at first as I was expecting a front-page. However this seems right on target as people most likely are searching for a place to make reservations. So while it was a bit unexpected, it made making a booking very easy. No hunting and pecking to find the booking engine to make a reservation.

The second link on Google was a more traditional link that took me to a clean and conventional web site where I could make a booking or find out a bit more about the hotel. Kudos goes to the site for showing pictures of each room instead of a single image for all rooms. However I was unable to easily find a photo gallery which is one of the large factors for wanting to stay in the first place. We want to see lavish photos of this elegantly appointed hotel. A picture truly is worth a thousand words and could help this grand hotel say a lot.

I must say that the initial video on the more traditional link from Google was a bit disheartening as that is all that showed on the front page. Certainly it could have been worked into the main page rather than having a oddly and disconnected video all by itself.

It doesn’t appear as the hotel is marketed much on the internet as the Google Page Rank is non-existent and there are few links and images pointing to the site.

As for the inside of the page, the code makes use of deprecated tags and is somewhat bloated. The overall structure of the page however makes it fairly fast loading. It produced 30 errors on the main page, but validates in the CSS department. It struggles a bit with accessibility as there were 2 errors and 15 warnings on the home page. Overall I would give the site a B on the front-end and a C on the back end. From such a grand hotel I would expect a little grander web site.

While the Grand Hotel is an impeccable establishment that my family and friends have enjoyed staying at their site does need a little house cleaning.