Yesterday morning I found myself in need of a hotel in or near Burbank, California. No big deal, right? I did my typical search across a few different sites (ended up booking via hotels.com because I was redeeming my Welcome Rewards points) and found a room at the Ramada by the airport that was the right price and got decent enough reviews (though mine won’t be so glowing, I expect). Once I had that as a basis for my price comparisons I did what I normally do next – check the page of the hotel operator to see if they’ve got a better deal or a best rate guarantee I can take advantage of. And that’s where they lost me.
Perhaps more appropriately I should say that Ramada lost Burbank. Typing Burbank, California into their search engine returned the following map results:
Apparently we’re moving Burbank 300 miles northwest this weekend. Go figure.
Not the first random hotel booking site that I’ve found cannot get geography and I got around it (searched for Los Angeles and scrolled up the map to Burbank) but pretty impressive that they can fail so badly.
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I got Google to move Mt. Whitney recently and I’ll bet you get Ramada to move Burbank back to southern California before too long.
I personally understand the desire to be located more northerly in California.
Maps shouldn’t have those feelings.
The correct response is, don’t you WISH Burbank were 300 miles northwest?
Burbank is also a neighborhood in western San Jose, so that’s what Ramada is hitting on.
Thanks for bursting my bubble with a real answer, Corey. I guess that makes sense enough, though it was certainly confusing for me when I went searching for a hotel.