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Oyster Hotel Reviews Launches With Independent, Expert Hotel Reviews

Posted on: Monday, 22 June 2009, 07:30 CDT

Complete With In-Depth Hotel Reviews Done By Reporters Who Stay at the Hotel Anonymously and Take Hundreds of Candid Photos

NEW YORK, June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Oyster Hotel Reviews (www.oyster.com) launched today, bringing clarity and authority to the difficult task of choosing the right hotel to stay at while traveling.

Oyster Hotel Reviews maintains hundreds of original reviews, and more than 50,000 undoctored, original photos of the hotels of New York, Miami, Aruba, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. Many more locations will be added to the site in the months ahead, including Las Vegas in July 2009.

In stealth mode since its founding in March 2008, Oyster Hotel Reviews has spent the past 15 months dispatching a staff of experienced journalists with credentials ranging from New York Times to Men's Journal, The Village Voice and Conde Nast Traveler among others, to anonymously stay in hotels, investigate them methodically and in depth-and take hundreds of photos so that readers can see the hotel in depth before they go.

The Internet is overloaded with thousands of hotels and resorts who misrepresent themselves, via exaggeration and even outright misrepresentation on the Web. The leading travel booking sites simply recycle photos and property descriptions they receive from the hotels themselves. And to this cacophony of untrustworthy claims, anonymous user reviews can add sometimes biased reviews leading even great hotels to receive one star ratings and vice versa.

"Quite simply, travelers today have no reliable source to rely on for hotel information and hotel reviews. Reading hotel websites and anonymous reviews, people can't discover the truth. There are tremendous differences between what our reporters bring back and the marketing distortions of the hotel industry," said Elie Seidman, founder and CEO of Oyster Hotel Reviews. "The vast majority of hotel descriptions and photos circulating on the Internet originates in the hotel's own marketing departments and gets reproduced over and over as legitimate truth - but it's often highly misleading. By pulling back the sheets and revealing what you're really going to get, Oyster Hotel Reviews will fundamentally change the way people make hotel decisions."

"We understand that hotel stays are one of the few things you can't try before you buy - and usually the most expensive part of travel expenses. And in these times, with dollars and time ever more precious, who wants to get duped? Because of this, Oyster Hotel Reviews is determined to act as an unbiased consumer advocate and create the most detailed, accurate, and comprehensive hotel review anywhere - online or off," added Seidman.

Oyster Hotel Reviews Hotel Investigators experience every hotel they review. They visit and stay in the hotel anonymously. They sleep in the beds, swim in the pools, eat the food, interview the guests, and shoot hundreds of photos. Every review looks at service, design, dining, cleanliness, nearby nightlife, and even the thread count of the sheets on the beds. In addition, the site considers the specific needs of different types of travelers, including families with children, honeymooners, business travelers, golfers, pet owners, and those on limited budgets. To assure that consumers get apples-to-apples comparisons, Oyster Hotel Reviews reporters evaluate hotels on 70 different quantitative and qualitative dimensions.

About Oyster Hotel Reviews

Financed by Bain Capital Ventures and led by an accomplished and experienced management team, Oyster Hotel Reviews is the first and only company dedicated to publishing objective, in-depth reviews, written by trained journalists, of the world's hotels. Oyster Hotel Reviews adheres to the highest editorial standards; it does not accept compensation or incentives from hotels, and pays for all travel expenses. Hotels cannot pay to be reviewed nor can they influence the reviews in any way. Formed in March 2008, Oyster Hotel Reviews management includes Microsoft alumni - Andy Laucius and Eytan Seidman, both formerly on Live Search (now Bing.com) - and two highly accomplished serial entrepreneurs, Ariel Charytan and Elie Seidman.

www.oyster.com

CONTACT: Lauren Bishop 212-584-4272 lbishop@5wpr.com

SOURCE Oyster Hotel Reviews

Source: PR Newswire

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