Places to stay under $150

Posted by Gabe on Aug 12, 2008 |

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Darn Good Digs

You’re planning a trip and you want to stay some place unique, different from the large chain hotels, and with local flavor. Finding these smaller hotels, inns and b & b’s can often be time-consuming and bewildering because there are so many properties out there, but no easy way to determine which ones are really good. A new travel website, darngooddigs.com, intends to make discovering those hard-to-find gems much easier. “We’re using the power of word of mouth,” says Michael Gonchar, co-founder of Darn Good Digs, “and expanding it to the entire web travel community.”

Travelers nominate their all-time favorite places to stay that are independently owned and reasonably priced, and then Michael and his wife and co-founder, Allison, research the submissions to determine which hotels are truly the best of the best. Darn Good Digs are the places deemed to be particularly outstanding, and they all have rooms from US$1 to $150. The site includes an original review of each hotel, written by the nominating traveler, which explains what makes this hotel exceptional. Photographs and a map accompany each review.

The assortment of hotels included on darngooddigs.com is different than what you would find on most booking service or hotel reservation websites. Some of these properties only have two or three rooms, and many only allow for direct reservations. There are no Marriotts or Hiltons here.

“Definitely the most fun part of running our own website is getting new nominations,” says Allison. “We launched the website back in May with reviews of 10 amazing places where we stayed during our travels, but now we’re counting on other travelers to share their favorites.” The site currently has reviews of 22 Darn Good Digs. “We hope to bump that number up to 50, or even more, by the end of this year.” If you’ve stayed at any extraordinary places that you’d like to share, go ahead and nominate them at www.darngooddigs.com.