HOW TO: Track Down Your Dream Hotel

HOW TO: Track Down Your Dream Hotel





TripAdvisor

 

                                      TripAdvisor, Inc. is an American travel and restaurant website company providing hotel and restaurant reviews, accommodation bookings and other travel-related content. It also includes interactive travel forums.

TripAdvisor was an early adopter of user-generated content. The website services are free to users, who provide most of the content, and the website is supported by a hotel booking facility and an advertising business model.


History

                                         In February 2000, TripAdvisor was founded by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, and several others. Kaufer says the original idea wasn't a user generated social media site to swap reviews. Rather, "We started as a site where we were focused more on those official words from guidebooks or newspapers or magazines. We also had a button in the very beginning that said, "Visitors add your own review", and boy, did that just take off. Pretty soon the number of average consumer reviews far surpassed the number of 'professional reviews'. That is when the site really turned into this collection of what the normal traveler was saying wherever they were going." Original financing was obtained from Flagship Ventures, the Bollard Group, and private investors.In 2004, the company was purchased by IAC/InterActiveCorp.In August 2005, IAC spun off its travel group of businesses under the Expedia, Inc. name.

Headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts

                                          In April 2009, TripAdvisor launched its official site in China, www.daodao.com. Since then it has indexed more than 20,000 hotels and restaurants information and customer reviews, and made top lists, becoming one of the biggest travel websites as of July 2011.In September 2010, SmarterTravel, part of TripAdvisor Media Group, launched SniqueAway (now Jetsetter), the first members-only site where each travel deal is endorsed by the people.In March 2011, TripAdvisor informed all registered TripAdvisor members that an unauthorized third party had stolen some of TripAdvisor's email list and might use it to create spam messages. No passwords or other information was stolen. This happened shortly before many other companies reported similar thefts of the addresses on their email lists.

                                           In April 2011, it was announced that Expedia would split into two publicly traded companies by spinning off the TripAdvisor brand of travel sites. According to Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the move "allows the two businesses to be pure plays and to operate with the proper amount of focus to grow respectively."According to a July 2011 PhoCusWright survey of 3,641 respondents, solicited at random through a pop-up invitation link on TripAdvisor.com and commissioned by Trip Advisor, “98% of participants found that TripAdvisor’s hotel reviews … accurately reflect the experience.”

                                           In December 2011, TripAdvisor was spun off from Expedia in a public offering.TripAdvisor states it is the world’s largest travel site, with nearly 280 million unique monthly visitors.In April 2012, the company launched a connection to Facebook that lets users select reviews from people in their social graph.In August 2014, a survey found that TripAdvisor was the most widely recognized, used, and trusted travel website.In October 2014, Trip Advisor released a new feature, "Just for you", offering tailored hotel recommendations based on the user's preferences and search history on the site. This feature mirrored the "Tribes" feature launched on competitor site Gogobot in 2013.In 2015, Tripadvisor started letting users not only rate places but tag them, saying, for example that a place offers brunch, is open on Sunday, or offers delivery, takeout, etc.

hallyez: Kanakakkunnu PalaceKanakakkunnu Palace is situated...

hallyez: Kanakakkunnu PalaceKanakakkunnu Palace is situated...: Kanakakkunnu Palace Kanakakkunnu Palace   is situated in  Thiruvananthapuram  near the  Napier museum . Today the palace and its spraw...

Kanakakkunnu Palace

Kanakakkunnu Palace is situated in Thiruvananthapuram near the Napier museum.

Today the palace and its sprawling grounds are the venue for many cultural meets and programmes. An all India Dance Festival (October to March) is organized by the Department of Tourism every year. During this period the classical Indian Dance performances are conducted every day. There are several tourists streaming from many foreign countries every year.

Kanakakkunnu Palace View

History

It is said to be built by Sree Moolam Thirunal.It has been later used by the travancore royal family to entertain its guests and serve non vegetarian food as the royal family was vegetarian. It is now protected by the tourism department the palace plays host to a lot of cultural meets and programs. The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has listed this place as a heritage monument.

Napier Museum

The Napier Museum is an art and natural history museum situated in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), the capital city of Kerala, India.

Napier palace museum location : Trivandrum

Features

The museum houses a rare collection of archaeological and historic artifacts, bronze idols, ancient ornaments, a temple chariot and ivory carvings. It also contains the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, which contains works from Raja Ravi Varma and Nicholas Roerich, as well as examples of Mughal and Tanjore art.

The Museum grounds also hold the famous Trivandrum Zoo, which is one of the oldest zoological gardens in India. This Zoo was established in 1857 and is spread over 55 acres (220,000 m²) of land.

Neyyar Dam

Neyyar dam is a gravity dam on the Neyyar River in Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala, South India, located on the foot of the Western Ghats about 30 km from Thiruvananthapuram.It was established in 1958 and is a popular picnic spot. Lying against the southern low hills of the Western Ghats, Neyyar Dam has a scenic lake.

Neyyar Dam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

Marine aquarium

A marine aquarium is an aquarium that keeps marine plants and animals in a contained environment. Marine aquaria are further subdivided by hobbyists into fish only (FO), fish only with live rock (FOWLR), and reef aquaria. Fish only tanks often showcase large or aggressive marine fish species and generally rely on mechanical and chemical filtration. FOWLR and reef tanks use live rock, a material composed of coral skeletons harboring beneficial nitrogen waste metabolizing bacteria, as a means of more natural biological filtration.

Marine fishkeeping is different from its freshwater counterpart because of the fundamental differences in the constitution of saltwater and the resulting differences in the adaptation of its inhabitants. A stable marine aquarium requires more equipment than freshwater systems, and generally requires more stringent water quality monitoring.^[1] The inhabitants of a marine aquarium are often difficult to acquire and are usually more expensive than freshwater aquarium inhabitants. However, the inhabitants of saltwater aquariums are usually much more spectacular than freshwater aquarium fish.

A marine aquarium

Marine fishkeeping history

he first saltwater tanks were Venetian glass jars where the Romans kept anemones outdoors, but these systems were very short lived.

The Aztec Empire had 10 ponds of saltwater aquariums at Texcoco.

In 1846, Anna Thynne maintained stony corals and seaweed for almost three years, and was credited as the creator of the first balanced marine aquarium in London.^[3][4]

Personal saltwater fishkeeping began on a wider scale in the 1950s, starting with the basic rectangular glass aquariums (usually 20 gallon), still popular today. Bleached coral along with a substrate of coarse crushed coral were the norm. Algae, including beneficial types such as coralline algae, were viewed negatively and were generally removed. The clean, sterile tank was viewed as the healthiest.

During the early days of marine aquaria, saltwater was collected at local beaches. Natural saltwater contains many unwanted organisms and pollutants. Aquarium literature of the time suggests that the most commonly kept marine fish were the percula clownfish, sergeant major damselfish, small, brackish-water puffer fish and scats, jeweled blennies, and blue damsels. Aquariums were equipped with large air compressors, and were heavily aerated and filtered (primarily with under gravel filters, a norm for some time).

An ever-growing number of hobbyists experiencing the inconvenience of gathering natural sea water and the concurrent development of analytical chemistry techniques led to research into the chemical composition of sea water. Synthetic salt mixes were developed to replicate the chemical environment of the tropical ocean, including trace elements and salts. This advance made marine fishkeeping popular in areas without access to clean sea water.

Air driven, counter-current protein skimmers and reliable submersible electric heaters were invented in Germany. Various advances in filtration included trickle and hang-on filters, both allowing a more natural equilibrium in the aquarium environment. The advancement of fluorescent lighting technologies to provide higher output, along with metal halide lighting, enabled the first reef tanks, making it possible to keep corals and other invertebrates without natural sunlight.

More efficient chemical testing allowed aquarists to understand the chemical properties of aquariums. By the 1980s, a biologically-based understanding of how to maintain an artificial ocean environment brought more successful and widespread marine fishkeeping.

Shankumugham Beach

Shankumugham Beach is a beach in Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala, south India.

 The beach is on the western side of Thiruvananthapuram(Trivandrum) and very near to Trivandrum International Airport.

Shankumugam

The vast stretch of white sand and the serene atmosphere, away from the crowd in the city, provide all the ingredients for relaxation and for spending an ideal evening. There is also a “Star Fish Restaurant” with eating kiosks and open-air theatre with car parking facilities. Good food can be enjoyed at the Indian Coffee House, just across the beach, which is also a vantage point for enjoying the sunset. Unfortunately, the beach is not well maintained with garbage littering the entire area.

VELI

The Veli Tourist Village which lies where the Veli Lake meets the Arabian Sea provides for unique boating and picnicking opportunities. Visitors can hire pedal boats or paddleboats as per their convenience. One can also roam the gardens and have a nice picnic or choose to employ the boats for the entire duration of the trip. The view and feel of the place is extremely unique, considering it is merely 12 kms from the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram. Children are known to have a lot of fun climbing the sculptures here and the speedboat ride across the waters. A separate Children’s Park and Floating Cafe run by Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC) are added incentives to visit this unique village.

VELI LAKE

Poovar

Poovar is a tourist town in the Trivandrum district of Kerala state, South India. This village is almost at the southern tip of Trivandrum while the next village, Pozhiyoor, marks the end of Kerala. This village beach attracts tourists.

Poovar beach

Geography

Poovar lies very close to Vizhinjam, a natural harbor. Poovar has an estuary which connects with the sea during high tides. The 56 km Neyyar Riverpasses through Neyyattinkara taluk into the Arabian Sea near Poovar. Its natural environment enables it to be a tourist spot

History
Poovar was a trading center of timber, sandalwood, ivory and spices. In around 1,000 BCE, it is believed that ships owned by King Solomon of Israel landed in Ophir, which is identified by some sources as Poovar, while the village was one of the ancient Muslim settlements along the western coast of India. The central mosque in Poovar was built by Malik Deenar, an eighth century Muslim preacher. During the reign of the Chola dynasty, Poovar was a major port. The explorer Megasthenes, Roman writer Pliny the Elder and Venetian traveller Marco Polo mention connections with Greece and Rome

There were a merchant named Pokku Moosa Maraikkar who lived in Poovar during the 18th century in a house called Kallaraickal Tharavad, which many times gave shelter to Marthanda Varma (1706–58), king of Travancore from his enemies. Poovar also had trade relations with international markets at this time as well as a well trained army and some ships. At the Battle of Colachel and Battle of Kayamkulam these forces assisted the Travancore army against the Dutch East India Companyduring the Travancore–Dutch War.

The origin of the name "Poovar" has a story related to Marthanda Varma. Before that it was called Pokkumoosapuram. During internal riots in Travancore and while escaping from the Ettuveetil Pillamar (Lords of the Eight Houses), the king reached Poovar. It was a spring season and the trees on either sides of the Neyyar were full of flowers. These flowers fell into the river making it more attractive. On seeing this pleasant scenery, Marthanda Varma commented that this was poo-var, a conjunction of the Malayalam words for "flower" and "river"

Kovalam

Kovalam is a beach town by the Arabian Sea in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, located around 18 km south of the city center

Kovalam beach, Trivandrum

History

Kovalam first received attention when the Regent Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore constructed her beach resort, Halcyon Castle, here towards the end of the 1920s. Thereafter the place was brought to the public eye by her nephew the Maharaja of Travancore.The European guests of the then Travancore kingdom discovered the potentiality of Kovalam beach as a tourist destination in the 1930s. However, Kovalam shot into limelight in the early seventies with arrivals of the masses of hippies on their way to Ceylon in the Hippie Trail. This exodus started the transformation of a casual fishing village of Kerala into one of the most important tourist destinations in all India