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Wikitravel:Accommodation listings

From Wikitravel

Contents

• [+] <sleep> tag
  • Example
• Apartment listings
• Avoid listing nearest attractions
• Compilation from external sources
• Avoid long lists
• See also

Accommodation listings should be of the form below:

Name of Place, Address (extra directions if necessary), phone number (email, fax, other contact if possible), [1]. Days and times open. One to three sentences about the service, atmosphere, view, rooms, what have you. $lowprice-$highprice (extra price info).

Here's the wiki markup:

*'''Name of Place''', Address (''extra directions if necessary''), phone number (''email, fax, other contact if possible''), [http://www.hotel.example.com/]. Days and times open. One to three sentences about the service, atmosphere, view, rooms, what have you. $lowprice-$highprice (''extra price info'').

Here's an example from Paris:

Hotel Eldorado, Rue des Dames 18, 17th (metro: Place de Clichy), tel: +33 1 4522 3521 (fax: +33 1 4387 2597, email: eldoradohotel@wanadoo.fr), [2]. The Eldorado, a former maison de rendez-vous, was once home to the kept women of the 19th century bourgeois. Now a very cute no star hotel, its charm more than makes up for what it lacks in amenities (who needs a TV in Paris anyway?). The staff is super friendly, the decor is garage sale chic, and there’s a lovely courtyard that fills with neighbourhood hipsters on warm evenings. It also has a very good location & you can easily avoid the noise of Pigalle or Montmartre's high prices, but they’re within stumble distance if you decide to explore. For early risers breakfast (€5, until 10 am) is served in the attached restaurant/bar. Some English spoken, especially for those who pet the cat sprawled across the reception desk. 23/39 Eur. - €49/79. (singles/doubles)

Some notes:

Addresses should just be the street and number, not a full postal address.
If the city is different (for example, in a suburb), add that, too.
Phone numbers should be in international format with the non-local calling part in italics (like "+1 514 555-1000" or, for areas with 10 digit dialing: "+1 514-555-1000").
Days should be abbreviated (M Tu W Th F Sa Su), times should be AM and PM.
Prices should be in the local currency, except where payment must be made in a foreign currency (for example, US$ in Myanmar).
URLs should point to the official Web site for the hotel or other accommodations, and should conform to Wikitravel guidelines for external links. If there's no official Web site, just leave that part out.

[edit] <sleep> tag

You can also format accommodation listings using the <sleep> tag, which makes it easy to ensure that formatting is perfect.

* <sleep name="Name" alt="Local script" address="Address" directions="Directions"
phone="Phone" email="E-mail" fax="Fax number" checkin="Time" checkout="Time"
price="Range" url="Website">Description of place</sleep>

name 

The name of the place. Don't include the city name unless it's needed for clarity.

alt 

If the place has a significantly different name in the local language, add it here. Non-Latin scripts like Japanese, Devanagari, Cyrillic etc can be used.

address 

Street and number of the place, plus district if applicable. No postcode, and don't repeat the city name.

directions 

Additional directions for how to find the place (if necessary).

phone 

Direct telephone number of the place.

e-mail 

E-mail address of the place.

fax 

Fax number of the place.

checkin 

Earliest allowed check-in time.

checkout 

Latest allowed check-out time.

price 

The rack rate/standard price of a typical double room in the local currency. If there are large differences (eg. dorms bed and single rooms), note them both.

url 

Link to the hotel's official website. Include the http://.

description 

One to three sentences about the service, atmosphere, view, rooms, what have you.

All fields above are optional. If you don't know some information, just leave in the empty field, so somebody else can fill it up later.

[edit] Example

This listing:

* <sleep name="Yinbo Hotel" alt="金波大酒店" address="135 Tiantong Road"
directions="across the bridge on the north side of the Bund"
phone="+86 21-63566288" email="" fax="+86 21-63257555" checkin="" checkout=""
price="¥338" url=""> Typical nondescript mid-range
hotel located across the bridge on the north side of the Bund.</sleep>

Shows up like this:

Yinbo Hotel (金波大酒店), 135 Tiantong Road (across the bridge on the north side of the Bund), ☎ +86 21-63566288 (fax: +86 21-63257555). Typical nondescript mid-range hotel. ¥338.

[edit] Apartment listings

Owners of apartments, condos, and vacation homes sometimes arrange with a rental agency to rent out their place when they aren't using it. In order to list an agency in Wikitravel, it must meet the following conditions:

The agency must have a 'real world' office with a phone number and physical address (not a PO box) where the keys will be picked up, and that information must be included in the Wikitravel listing and on the agency website
Rentals of less than 1 week must be available
The lodgings must not be available to rent directly through the owner
Must be in a location where travellers frequently rent cabins/apartments

[edit] Avoid listing nearest attractions

Accommodation owners frequently give detailed list of attractions that their property is close to. We don't welcome it here at Wikitravel:

it is difficult to judge which hotel is more convenient to a particular attraction,
it overloads listing text with details irrelevant for many travelers

Instead of writing a long flowery description of the many attractions near the property, contribute detailed lat-long coordinates of the property (see Wikitravel:Geocoding)--it will be much more helpful for a traveler choosing a place to stay.

[edit] Compilation from external sources

Since many Wikitravelers find ways to get by without paid accommodation the Sleep sections of many destination articles tend to go unfilled even long after other sections are stuffed. For this reason contributors are encouraged to compile material from reviews. Obviously you shouldn't copy somebody else's words into Wikitravel, but should rather give your impression of the body of reviews you have read.

Here's an idea of what a listing compiled from reviews might look like:

Hotel del Sol, 44 Ramblas del sol, 55 555 55 55. This hotel receives mostly good reviews with a few people noting that the water pressure could be a bit stronger in the shared showers. The rooms facing the sea are said to have wonderful views, but for #29 which is behind the neighboring building's television aerial. 30-50€.

Note that the origin of the ideas in the listing are clearly from reviews, but that the words are not. The detail about the TV antenna could be a close call, but only if the words are copied. The presence of the antenna, and its marring of the view from a particular room, would be facts which are free from copyright.

[edit] Avoid long lists

This is a travel guide, not the yellow pages. A long undifferentiated list of hotels is only marginally useful to the traveler. A general rule of thumb is that lists should contain 5-9 items, and when they exceed that length it is time to consider breaking them up. There are several different ways to deal with long lists:

Use districts. Large cities are broken up into districts and accommodation listings go in district articles. Having listings in a main article of a huge city is not recommended.

Use price ranges. All accommodation lists should use the sub-headings "Budget", "Mid-range" and "Splurge", with the rough price brackets indicated with the {{sleeppricerange|Budget range|Mid-range|Splurge range}} template.

Further subdivisions within district and price categories can be invented as you go along, whatever suits the location:

by neighborhood, which can be more fine-grained than districts.
by location — "around the train station", "on the beach", et cetera.
by season — a few hotels for when it is not busy and a list of fallbacks for peak times.
by style — Western vs traditional or party animal vs meditation student.

These are just examples; invent your own as needed.

Ruthless pruning. We are looking for a few good hotels to tell travellers about; describe those and simply omit the rest. In cases where a list is long and there are listings that are obviously inferior - for example, those without a description of the establishment - this approach may be valid.

Note that there are also situations where a longer list really does make sense. If a "tourist town" has dozens of nearly identical hotels, then it may make little difference to the traveller which one he picks and it might be quite difficult for the writer to prune the list. Perhaps listings can be split up some, but you are still going to have long lists.

[edit] See also

Wikitravel:Listings, Wikitravel:Manual of style, Wikitravel:Don't tout