I was in Rome, Italy on a leisure trip with two other friends.  Rome was one city out of our three destination vacation package. This was my very first vacation out of the United States and a 30th birthday/graduation present to myself.

My friends and I wanted the best experience possible. We wanted certain features, like a safety box for our passports and important documents. It was also important to us that the hotel be conveniently located near tourist attractions and/or public transportation. Our hotel guide provided a list of five star hotels which fit our requirements and received positive reviews from other travelers.

After spending a few days going over the list [...]

For several years bow, Google has always taken a forefront step in the travel industry. The advertising platform that Google offers is enormous.The search engine giant has a great influence in the way people view and consume travel data and information. In 2013 alone $4.7 billion was spent on US travel advertising. Slightly half of that amount went to websites and other digital channels (PhoCusWright data). Google already has numerous travel products. Some of them include Tour Builder, Google+ Travel Google City Experts, Google Hotel Finder,Google Hotel Finder, Google Field Tripper, and GoogleFlights. These products are geared to enhancing travel. Google also has a hotel price ad [...]

Located just steps away from the beautiful and scenic Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas, the Drury Plaza Hotel stands out among all the other hotels on the Riverwalk due to its exceptional service offered to customers lucky enough to pass through its doors.

With it proud history of going the extra mile for their customers, it’s no surprise that the Drury motto is that they provide their customers :

“Extras that don’t cost extra.”

What kind of extras are we talking about?

Many of these extras might be features that you have come to expect, such as:

Free HBO, Free local phone calls and free access to the hotel fitness gym, [...]

It was the middle of the summer and my husband and I found ourselves with an unexpected child-free weekend courtesy of my lovely and generous in-laws.

With glee, we started plotting.

Should we just enjoy a “staycation” and wander around our neck of the woods sniffing around our old but trusty haunts?  Or should we venture out somewhere new?

Pretty quickly, we settled in on wanting to go somewhere new, preferably near some water and with a wait staff that could hand us a fruity drink now and again.

The only dilemma we had was not living anywhere near the beach, in fact, living in Dallas, TX, we were a good 5 hours away from one.

Since we [...]