Advertisement

Web Buzz: New to a city? Let Villy be your neighborhood guide

Share

Traveling to a big city can be overwhelming. Here’s a website that helps you find — and book lodging in — the neighborhood that’s right for you.

Name: www.Villy.co

What it does: Recommends neighborhoods and hotels best suited to you based on what you want to do on your trip. Destinations include Bangkok, Thailand; Barcelona, Spain; Berlin; London; Miami; New York; Paris; Rome; San Francisco; and Seoul, with Amsterdam and Tokyo coming soon.

Advertisement

What’s hot: First, pick your city, then click on your interests from a short list that includes restaurants, bars and pubs, nightclubs, museums, sightseeing and shopping. Then, note who will be traveling and your per-night hotel budget, hit explore and be prepared to be impressed as a map of neighborhoods appears. The left half of the page lists why the neighborhood has been selected. You can easily see a drop-down list of neighborhoods that have been scored for you, or you can click on more recommended hotels. Hotel price, Villy score (based on its own algorithm), TripAdvisor rating and distance to subway stops are also at the ready. The site is simple to use, and travelers can quickly fine-tune their results by altering star ratings, budget and activities in the “update preferences” section. Note: Mobile friendly too.

What’s not: This travel website impressed me. I thought the one thing that could improve a user’s experience would be additional destination content. Recommendations were spot on, but for the traveler new to the city, I wanted more travel descriptions about neighborhoods, not just suggestions based on expert tips from an algorithm.

travel@latimes.com

Advertisement