We’re proud to announce the Finn-tastic launch this week of EuroCheapo Helsinki, our 29th city guide!
The new guide to cheap hotels in Helsinki takes us into exciting new territory, farther north and east than any of our other guides.
Sarah Silbert, a contributing editor who covered the city following her update of Copenhagen, was initially surprised by the high rates of hotels in Helsinki while planning her trip. “I had expected that, like other cities covered on the site, there would be a wide variety of budget sleeping options. But ‘budget’ in Helsinki is different than ‘budget’ in Berlin,” she explained.
While Helsinki has a few hostels and pensions to accommodate the most budget-minded of travelers, even these are a bit more expensive than the same type of lodging in other European cities. A dorm at the Hostel Erottajanpuisto, for example, costs $36 a night.
“In Helsinki,” Sarah said, “that’s really cheap.”
Bumping up a notch, a double room with shared bath at the Eurohostel runs $72-$84 a night. Despite its name, the property only offers private rooms, not dorms. ”I stayed at the Eurohostel and found it to be a good option, especially considering the steep rates at other hotels in Helsinki.”
EuroCheapo’s Helsinki guide also includes a number of three-star hotels, as well as travelers’ apartments and even one four-star pick. The city guide articles cover basics like Helsinki city transportation, expect to spend, and budget tips to keep it cheap.
We’re celebrating some exciting stuff at EuroCheapo HQ today. At long last, we’ve pulled back the curtains on a new site design and have made a giant upgrade to our technology. That’s right, Cheapos, we’ve put on our “fancy pants.”
Here’s a sampling of what’s new:
1. Enhanced city pages
Our new city pages (for example: Paris, London, Amsterdam…) now include neighborhood maps, dynamic hotel listings, aggregated (and verified) guest ratings, and easy access to other city guides. We also included links to EuroCheapo’s Twitter and Facebook pages, along with an archive of previous blog posts. Want to see it in action? Have a look!
2. Smarter hotel listings
In addition to reading our hotel reviews, Cheapos can now view guest ratings from our reservation partners and read reviews written by verified hotel guests. Furthermore, you can see the hotel’s location on an interactive map and view other hotel picks located nearby. We’ll also show you nearby landmarks, and provide you with more real-time information in the pricing module. Sound tempting? Try it out!
3. Helpful hotel filters and sorting tools
We’ve included all “sorts” of new filtering and sorting tools to help you find the perfect budget sleep. You can now sort by “most viewed hotel,” “user rating,” and more.
For example, say you’re looking for a hotel in Paris’ Latin Quarter that costs less than $100. Now you can quickly sort our hotels by neighborhood, by price range, by property type (hotel, hostel, pension, B&B and more), by average guest rating, or by properties that are frequently viewed by other Cheapos. And just to help out a little more, we display all of this information on a big Google Map that displays proximity to public transportation and other points of interest. Want to see it in action? Here you go!
But wait, there’s more!
These are just a few ways our new “fancy pants” will help budget travelers plan smarter and travel cheaper. We’d love to hear your feedback–what do you think, and how can we do better? Tell us below!
Special thanks to the EuroCheapo Insiders who provided all sorts of helpful feedback and, of course, to our tech superstars, Mike and James.
We’re rubbing the sleep from our eyes a little later than usual today, dear Cheapos. Thanks to all who attended our “Farewell Winter” party at the home office in New York City last night. The place was packed and the night roused on until late. Folks chattered of finding cheap airline tickets, what cool budget locales they’d recently visited, and we all praised Tom’s succulent sangria (Hint: He uses lemons, limes, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries!).
Stay tuned if you missed this one. We’ll be hosting another party once the weather turns warm.
Warming factors-
And, speaking of feelin’ the heat, it’s the last day of February. No leap year. Just one more cold ‘un before we turn into the Ides of March. So we thought we’d take this opportunity to point out a few recent travel stories that are making us warm and fuzzy all over:
-BootsnAll posted about the 12 most amazing pools in the world. Care for a dip?
-Finally, a dear friend of EuroCheapo is living and working on a farm in Italy. You can follow his narration here. (Catch the classic mention of “cheapo” standards. I mean, working on a farm in order to live abroad? Very Good Cheapo!)
Over the last several months, we’ve been quietly toiling away at redesigning the EuroCheapo homepage. After many revisions, tweaks, testing, more tweaks, bug testing and pulling solid patches of hair out of our collective heads, we finally took it live late last night. Hallelujah!
What’s with the redesign, you might ask?
Well, we loved the way the previous version looked, but we felt it didn’t feel particularly “alive.” Given we’re constantly updating hotel reviews, city guide articles, blog posts and other content, we wanted this constant activity to be reflected on our homepage as well.
Our new design allows us to showcase five featured hotels every day, highlight each day’s newest blog entry from our editors and writers, and promote a new featured article from our city guides. Every day you return back to EuroCheapo you’ll see a fresh batch of selected hotels, blog entries, articles and maybe - just maybe - a few more surprises we have up our sleaves here at EuroCheapo HQ.
Also, we’ve received lots of great feedback over the past year from fellow Cheapos who just discovered how helpful our search engine is in quickly finding budget hotels. Many of them, though, hadn’t previously completed a search on EuroCheapo out of concern that doing so would take them away from the site or not allow them to view our search results.
To address this, we also redesigned our search box and gave it a little more “front and center” prominence on the page, to help other Cheapos discover and experience its magical budget power!
Bug zapping
While we tried to catch each and every bug prior to launch, we’re sure we missed some. Heck, we just realized our blog entries aren’t formatted correctly (this will be taken care of shortly!) However, if you do come across anything that seems, well, weird, confusing or broken, please email us and let us know.
Special thanks
We’d like to say a special thank you to a few of the Cheapos who helped us with this big project. To our tech wizards, Mike and James, thanks so much and we’ll do our best to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6. And to the many EuroCheapo Insiders who provided so much feedback and comments throughout development, thanks for taking the time to help us out!
What do you think? We’d love to hear any additional comments and feedback about the new homepage design in the comments section below!
If any Cheapos will be in Los Angeles this weekend (February 14-15, 2009), make sure you take advantage of the budget-conscious offerings at the Los Angeles Times Travel & Adventure Show, taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
If you stop by at noon on Sunday, you can join me, as I represent EuroCheapo in a panel discussion on the “10 Best Destinations for Traveling on a Budget.” The timely discourse will be moderated by Jen Leo, travel writer and blogger for the LA Times. I’ll be joined by travel writers Rolf Potts of Vagabonding, and Johnny Jet of JohnnyJet.com. The panel will be held at noon on Sunday, February 15, in Petree Hall C.
Some star-studded offerings
The travel show will also feature several presentations by well known travel personalities. Rick Steves will speak on both days about “Budget European Travel Skills,” father and daughter duo Arthur and Pauline Frommer will discuss “Traveling during These Troubled Times” on Saturday and Sunday, and the Travel Channel’s Samantha Brown is scheduled to speak on Saturday morning.
In addition, numerous panel discussions will be populated with travel writers and editors discussing topics such as “10 Hot Tips for Getting Travel Deals Online” and “When a Good Deal Isn’t: How to Avoid Getting Scammed.”
Join me! And give me suggestions!
I’ll be taking notes — and running from one discussion to the next. If you’re planning on coming, join me!
Also, please send me your suggestions (or leave them below). What do you think are the best budget European destinations? Do you have a favorite? Do you know of a destination that’s often overlooked and underrated? Please share below!
A gorgeous terminal in Madrid’s airport. Photo by lowfatbrains.
One of the things we look forward to each January is making our annual New Year’s resolutions. Call us crazy, but for whatever reason, the process of manic reinvention and self renewal just gets us excited.
And while we have a number of the ol’ standbys on our list (did somebody say “less caffeine, more jogging, and only red wine instead of Weihenstephans?”), we’ve also put together some travel resolutions. Drum roll, please:
Ten resolutions for budget-friendly traveling in 2009
1. I resolve to travel more.
2. I resolve to understand my bank’s ATM and credit card fees before I go. And while I’m at it, I might even call my bank ahead of time to let them know it’s me who’s traveling, rather than my stolen identity.
3. I resolve to purchase my intra-European flights on low-cost carriers as early as possible to get wild and crazy deals.
4. I resolve to stop obsessing over the daily fluctuations of exchange rates.
5 a. I resolve to understand how much I’ll get charged before using my Blackberry abroad.
5 b. I resolve to just leave my Blackberry off while I travel.
6. I resolve to rely on my memory as much as my camera.
7. I resolve to break out of my own travel mode and welcome new destinations. (Extra credit points go to fellow Cheapo-in-Chief Tom Meyers, who blasts off for St. Petersberg, Russia, in 2 weeks…)
8. I resolve to be better about frequent flyer points and awards programs, regardless if I plan to travel a long or short distance.
9. I resolve to never take a taxi to or from an airport, no matter how tired I feel.
10. I resolve to always be in the process of planning my next trip, even if it means just reading up on the destination or looking at photos.
What are your New Year’s travel resolutions? Please add them in the comment field below!
Last week we asked Cheapos worldwide to try and help get EuroCheapo on the ballot for the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards. Thanks to each and every one of you, we received word that we made it and are now in the semi-final round of the competition! Danke! Gracias! Merci bien!
Now we have until November 30th to try and push EuroCheapo into the final round and we need your help. Just enter your valid email address into the box above, click “Vote Now” and you’ll receive an email message containing a link to confirm your vote. Alternatively, you can visit the Open Web Awards site and cast your vote directly, too.
Voting only takes a couple seconds and each person is able to vote for 1 company in each category each day. And thanks again for helping us get this far, Cheapos, we appreciate it!
