Notes
Plain-English notes on travel, prices, and how we build this site. Signed, dated, no fluff.
21 October 2026 · industry
How I measure the distance from a hotel to the airport
107,586 hotels, 10,171 places, a billion possible pairs: how the travel times on every hotel page are worked out, one region at a time, every night.
18 October 2026 · travel
Ten of the world's famous Christmas markets, and how many hotels are a short walk away
Photo: Roland Berger · CC BY-SA 3.0
I counted the places to stay within 500 metres, 1 km and 2 km of ten Christmas markets, from Nuremberg and Prague to New York and Sapporo, with each market's 2026 dates from its organisers.
20 September 2026 · engineering
ChatGPT sends me more visitors than Google
Three months ago Google sent 94% of the visitors who came to my site from either Google or ChatGPT. Last month ChatGPT sent 82%. What flipped, why Google was never really looking, and the three cheap instruments that let you see AI traffic at all — because no search console will.
18 September 2026 · travel
What a big event really does to hotel prices nearby
local-hotel.com
I priced the same hotels twice — on the event night and on a matched quiet night — at eleven UK venues. Some grounds add 200%. London does not move at all.
15 September 2026 · industry
Wales cuts hospitality rates by 30% — and the hotels pay for it
The Welsh Bar, High Street, Merthyr Tydfil — photo by Jaggery, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wales doubles its hospitality rates relief from April 2027 — replacing an existing 15% cut, capped at a £51,000 rateable value, and funded by larger hotels.
11 September 2026 · engineering
The crawlers that replaced the crawlers
Ten days after I fenced off the SEO crawlers my database still never slept. Meta's AI trainer and Amazonbot had taken their place — neither sends anyone back.