Just like customers are allowed to see the layout of cabin when choosing seats for airplane or ship, it should also be available when choosing a hotel room. If you ever stayed in a great hotel but got stuck in a room with a lousy view or near a noisy elevator, there’s now a way to avoid those dud digs. Unlike sites like TripAdvisor that focus on the hotel in general, new website Room 77, offers a hotel room database and search engine for three-star-and-up properties.
So far, the website has more than 425,000 hotels in 16 U.S. cities and London, but the plan is to go global. It’s easy to use: Type in the hotel name, set your room preferences—floor height, view, elevator proximity and connecting/non-connecting. Then it spits out matches fitting your hotel-crashing needs. Click on a suggested room, and the site generates a virtual room-window view using Google Earth and a Google Maps layout of the hotel floor.
A free iPhone app is available as well. It’ll come in handy when you’re at check-in and get a room assignment.
Although you can’t book directly on the site, Room 77 links to the hotel’s reservations engine and has a “request a room” button that offers tips on how to score a specific room. It also will be interactive, eventually allowing guests to rate rooms and submit photography of the spaces.