2009-11-03

NileGuide 5 with Will Begeny of Oyster.com

This week’s NileGuide 5 interview features Will Begeny of Oyster Hotel Reviews, a website that sends professional journalists to independently review and take hundreds of photos of the world’s hotels. A journalism outsider with investigative training alongside the NYPD, he has worked to develop Oyster’s unique, covert reviewing process. He’s a veteran traveler with passport stamps from Serbia to Laos to Guatemala and enjoys creative writing, home carpentry, experimental artwork, and exotic cuisine (having sampled more than a reasonable number of delectable insects over the years).

1. What’s the most underrated destination you’ve been to?

Jamaica. I could go on about Jamaica’s unfair rap in recent years-the impression that its homogenous all-inclusive mega-resorts have made the entire nation some sort of tourism cliché; its concentrated urban violence dissuading people from its unique, perfectly safe, hotels and resorts-but the bottom line is that Jamaica is arguably the most naturally beautiful island in the Caribbean, it has unfailingly kind and friendly people, and its gorgeous luxury hotels are going for rock-bottom, recession rates.

2. How do you kill time when you’re stuck on a bus or plane?

I read, naturally. Currently: The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt, which is about Venice.

3. What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen or experienced traveling?

Taking moonshine shoots with an insistent Orthodox priest? Talking love and cricket with Bob Marley’s alleged “spiritual advisor”? Bartering with a thieving monkey to retrieve a stranger’s busted camera? It’s tough to say what’s strangest. But I did witness-from a safe distance, of course-some very strange events that followed a geriatric, naked, hot tub party at the Grand Lido Negril. (A hint: they involved a parasailing harness, farting, and a dangerous amount of rum.)

4. What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at a new destination?

I get lost, intentionally.

5. If you could give one tip or piece of advice to travelers, what would it be?

Call the hotel directly and speak to someone who works at the hotel (not just the reservations rep). Hotels don’t update their websites very often, and the info you read on them can be very outdated or misleading-especially now that so many hotels have been making significant cutbacks.

[Photos: Oyster.com ]

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