Today I found Sooke Harbout House, a little gem from the National Geographic Stay List. It’s beautifully situated near a jutting peninsula that I dear you to not walk once you’ve seen in lovely Victoria, Vancouver Island. This continues my recent infatuation with the many beauties all around Canada as of late.

The property and location look awe inspiring as do some of the enormous photos on the main page. I understand they want to convey the beauty of this site, but the image sizes are way overboard. This is especially important as the main site navigation is only visible below this image once you scroll to find it.

If we look a bit at the usability of the site to review the accomodations, rates and photo gallery, we’ll find that Sooke Harbour makes you work a bit to see the beauty of the property. The site is dated and a little scattered in it’s navigation. There’s also an annoying JavaScript alert that shows up each time I go to the main page to tell me that I need to update my Flash Player, even though I already did that.

First if we look at accomodations, there is a link for guest rooms. These rooms really do appear tranquil and each room has a magnificent view of the ocean harbor. When I click on this menu item I’m greeted by a high quality, but too large image of one of the rooms. The rest of the page has the booking engine and information sprinkled around rather haphazardly.

One item I noticed that must be a misguided attempt at search engine optimization is that not only on the accomodations page is the title “Ocean view accommodations, fine dining seafood restaurant, art gallery and spa on Vancouver Island, located 45 minutes from Victoria”, but
the rest of the site shares the same title as well. As I go throughout the site I would expect this to change and be varied for my bookmarks.
Rate information is the next item that I don’t seem to be able to find. It must be only available when you search for a room.

Last but in no way least important is the photo gallery. While there are breathtaking images in the photo gallery it’s not readily accessible from the main page and navigating through it is somewhat of a chore. First, we loose all the main navigation and links to the rest of the site (if you hunt and peck you’ll find a home link). Next it’s difficult to know how to scroll through the thumbnails as there are now forward and back directional arrows. A better layout would be for smaller thumbnails in a side by side view.

The menu for the different room types could use an overhaul as well as it’s not very usable to have to keep going to the various sections and hover over an area and then select a room. I’m just so eager to see the superbly decorated rooms I don’t want to have to work so hard to see them.

This site like the property has some amazing views, they just need to be put together better. If we next look at the code we’ll see it is out of date and needs to be updated. The code is deprecated and filled with errors.

- 140 HTML errors
-CSS passed.
-Failed accessibility test

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

The other day I had an email pop into my Yahoo account about a hotel called Viking. My first thoughts were of the old Norse sailors and a rough and tumble meager lodging. On discovering the Hotel Viking all my thoughts were changed.

According to the hotels web site, “The award-winning Hotel Viking situated atop Newport’s Historic Hill neighborhood with breathtaking views of Bellevue Avenue mix in your mind’s eye with sightings of notable guests gone-by. There have been a few, since 1926, Will Rogers, Ella Fitzgerald, John and Jackie Kennedy.”

“The Hotel Viking opened to an awestruck public in May 1926. As a member of the prestigious Historic Hotels of America, the hotel holds a special place in history. From the clock above the Front Desk depicting ancient Nordic Runes to the original 1926 brass letter box in the Lobby, the hotel offers a wonderful combination of style, comfort and modern amenities.”

This is a beautiful property with wonderful colors, patterns and textures. If we take a look at their web site we can see that someone has not only updated their lodgings, but their web site as well. They have moved to a more modern web development using semantic markup. While they’ve gone to this effort, they still have a number of errors to overcome to validate.

If we look a bit at the usability of the site (accomodations, rates and photo gallery) it was easy right off to find their link for rooms and suites, rates weren’t readily available, but they had a nice photo gallery of images.

- 58 HTML errors
- 203 CSS errors.
-Failed accessibility test

Overall I would give the site an A for form and a B- function.

Billed as Canada’s Secluded Romantic Mountain Getaway the Emerald Lake Lodge is nestled in Field, British Columbia, Canada. Originally built in 1902 by the Canadian Pacific Railway it’s grown to become a winter wonderland and a secluded summer lodge that is a jewel in the Canadian crown of lodgings. This is absolutely one of those properties where I have the internal struggle trying to decide which season I want to visit it in first, summer or winter…decisions, decisions, decisions.

As of late I’ve been discovering and rediscovering the beauty that Canada holds. Around each corner seems to be another amazingly decorated lodge or Inn. This property simply is stunning with the amazing backdrop of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the near by Emerald Lake. One look at the photo gallery will having you wanting to call to make a reservation right away.

I’m definatly sold on staying at this lodge one day, so let’s jump right into the code. One glance at the code and file names and you can tell that someone has spent some time using semantic markup with tableless design and optimized the file names for search engines. While great effort has been taken with the code there are still a few markup errors on the main page, but overall this site is to be applauded.

- 9 HTML errors
- 1 CSS error.
-Failed accessibility test

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

Last night I happened across the Georgetown Inn in Washington D.C. It’s acclaimed to be one of the most recognizable establishments in D.C. and has been so for the more than 40 years. One look at their web page and your transported back to colonial times when things were a lot simpler. It’s conveniently located on Wisconsin Avenue within a couple miles of the Capitol, White House, National Mall and most other major monuments.

The obligatory Flash photo gallery infuses you with stately images of local monuments, the hotel itself and the Mall. I like how the images fade from black and white to color almost as a representation of changing from the past to the present. The site is laid out well overall with nice clean lines and soothing colors. The site like the hotel gives you a air of sophistication like you’d be a better, higher class of person just by walking through their doors.

A quick glance at their menu reveals a bit of a split personality. There appears to be two main menu’s with a possible third. This is a bit distracting, but manageable. Fairly quickly I find a guest room link that takes me to a nice view of the different room types, however I don’t readily see rates. This is assuaged a bit by the ad for $119 summer rates. I know right away if it fits in my budget. Next I look for the hotel photo gallery and I wasn’t disappointed to see a hotel photo tour on the menu.

Rather disappointingly I look at the code behind this properly adorned site and I see a raft of deprecated code. There is no semantic markup or tableless design, only old bloated code. Their search engine optimization is nowhere to be found as there isn’t a single header in the main page. There’s so much potential here for improvement in the usability, accessibility and search engine ranking of the site. They just renovated their 96, European-style accommodations, too bad some of that didn’t go to improving their web site as well.

- 15 HTML errors
- 13 CSS errors.
-Failed accessibility test

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