smartdepart.com

Here’s a website that makes choosing a hotel a snap.

» What it does: Allows you to drag two hotels onto the page so you can do side-by-side comparisons of price, ratings and reviews as well as night life, dining, shopping and tourism.

» What’s hot: I’ve never seen a comparison feature like this on other hotel booking sites — it’s the key to making your decisions easier. You can use additional tools at the top of the page to fine-tune your search by price, amenities, star ratings and more. If you’re not familiar with the area, you can easily open and close a map to see where the hotels are located. If you want to know why one hotel was recommended over the other for dining, click on that topic to read the Yelp reviews.

» What’s not: Double-check the prices. I found inconsistencies between search results and prices on the final booking page.

Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times