Location, Location, Location
So Jon thinks the key to picking the right hotel from this point onwards is location. If that were the sole factor Columbus Motor Inn wins in a landslide.
Identifying the 3 major things I want to do in San Francisco, other than Golden Gate Bridge related activities which would require a car anyways, they would be:
The Concert
Hard Rock Café
Ghirardelli’s
Columbus Motor Inn is within easy walking distance of 2 of those and we would likely want to take transportation to the third, the concert.
Vertigo is within easy walking distance to the concert, but a challenging walk to one other attraction and we would likely want transportation to the third.
Plus Columbus is on the route we’d want to take to just about everything whereas the Vertigo is a little off to the side.
Columbus is close to the Fisherman’s Wharf which has a lot of various attractions in addition to what I’ve already mentioned so if it’s a war of location Columbus wins handily.
Vertigo is stylish and the HD content is a big draw for me but the more I think about it the more I reluctantly think I need to take a step back from the idea. For one thing HD programming is a novelty now but in a couple years I’ll have it myself as will many people. The design is nice but it seems to come at the cost of space. Who cares if everything looks nice when you don’t have any room to move around? Plus I almost feel like I wouldn’t properly appreciate the Vertigo since I have not seen and have no intention of seeing the movie.
The 216 Trip Advisor reviews of Columbus brake down thusly:
Excellent: 100 (46%)
Very Good: 98 (45%)
Average: 13 (6%)
Poor: 4 (2%)
Terrible: 1 (less than 1%)
Curious about the worst case scenario I checked out the Terrible review, it was complaining about their website – I honestly don’t think the person even stayed at the property and the review is 3 years old.
I also looked in on the Poor reviews. One person was upset that they only had feather pillows, one person didn’t like the tone of voice when the person at the front desk gave them bus information, one person was upset because their online price was only valid with online bookings, and the last one was just incomprehensible.
So absolute worst case scenario I don’t like the website, get a feather pillow, get bus information in a funny voice, and have to book online. Well damn. Looks like I’d have a less than 3% chance of having a bad experience.
To put that in perspective here is the breakdown of the 191 reviews of the Hotel Vertigo:
Excellent: 40 (21%)
Very Good: 82 (43%)
Average: 38 (20%)
Poor: 19 (10%)
Terrible: 12 (6%)
I’d take a less than 3% chance of having a bad experience over a 16% chance any day. This really could be the Flic Flac of San Francisco or the Fred’s Automotive of San Francisco accommodations – if there’s one thing I learnt recently is the value of a good recommendation and review rating.
