So here’s the thing, right? Planning this weekend getaway with my partner, and guess what they suddenly declare absolutely non-negotiable? A room with a hot tub. A decent one, clean, preferably in the room itself. Simple ask? Oh hell no. That’s when my little experiment kicked off.
The Grand Plan (Or So I Thought)
I grabbed my laptop feeling pretty smart. My plan: Hit all the usual suspects for finding hotels, see who actually lets you easily find reviews talking specifically about the hot tub inside the room. Seems straightforward enough? Spoiler: It wasn’t.
Target Sites:
- The Biggest One (You know the name)
- The One With the Wizard
- The One That Claims to Search Everywhere Else
- That Popular Rental Site (For context)
Target Cities: Picked three random spots known for having places with tubs – think ski town, romantic getaway spot, and a big city hotspot.
Dates: Random weekend a month out. Simple filters: Hotel + Hot Tub. Hit search.
Diving Into the Mess
Okay, started feeling optimistic. Listings popped up, great! Clicked the first one on the first site. Scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled some more. Photos? Mostly lobby shots and beds. Reviews? “Nice stay,” “Comfortable bed,” “Friendly staff.” Useful? Not so much. Started scanning review summaries… “Bathtub”? Nope. “Jacuzzi”? Zero hits. One mentioned “tub” – turned out it was the bathroom tub, leaky. Useless.
Went to the next site. Filter applied: Hot Tub Amenity. Sweet! Listings appeared. Clicked one. This time, reviews had a section for “Room”. Clicked that. Scanned down… reviewer mentions “tiny balcony”… “coffee maker broke”… “soft towels”… nothing, nothing, nothing about a hot tub. Where was it? Did they just forget? Moved on.
Third site, the “search everywhere” one. Similar drill. Found a promising listing. Scrolled like crazy through endless photos and generic reviews. Finally spotted a reviewer picture… showed the room! Zoomed in… tub looked old and kinda grungy around the jets. One single picture buried in a user review confirmed the state. That was it. Pure luck.
Last stop, the rental giant. Searched apartment-style rentals. Filter: Hot Tub. Found places. Reviews here are usually wordier. Started reading… “…lovely hot tub on the deck overlooking…” Dang. On the deck. Shared? Probably. “…hot tub didn’t get very warm…” Mentioned! Buried in paragraph three of a long review about the host being nice. Painful to dig out.
I must’ve checked twenty listings across the sites. My eyes were crossing. Seriously felt like finding a needle in a haystack.
The “Ah-Ha?” Moment (More Like a Sigh)
It wasn’t one big revelation, more a slow, annoying realization.
- Keyword Search is King (and Terrible): The only remotely helpful tool was a keyword search within reviews, “jacuzzi” or “hot tub”. But it’s clunky, not always present, and reviews mentioning it might still be buried under hundreds.
- Photos are a Crapshoot: Professional photos almost never show the tub in the room clearly. You live and die by blurry guest photos uploaded weeks or years ago.
- Filter? What Filter? Having a “hot tub” amenity filter does not mean you can easily find reviews discussing its condition inside the room. It just finds places claiming to have one, somewhere.
- All Sites Fail: They all struggled. Hard. Some were marginally better because their review UI sucked less, but it was still digging through dirt hoping for gold.
Ended up finding the most usable info not through reviews talking about the tub itself, but by stumbling on guest pictures showing the actual, physical tub in the room context. And that was pure accident.
So What Actually Worked?
Manually opening listings flagged with a hot tub filter, drilling down into the reviews section, desperately using the keyword search if available, and then meticulously scrolling through every single user photo hoping one showed the tub clearly. Over. And over. And over. Brutal labor.
Was there a single site that did it well? Nope. Not one. They all make you do the grunt work. The “winner” was whichever site’s individual listing page loaded reviews and photos the fastest. Which is kinda depressing when you think about it. Efficiency based on page speed? Just common sense, huh? Maybe that’s the real lesson.
