The Historic Route 66 Motel in Tucumcari, N.M., was named the third-best bargain hotel in the United States in the Travelers Choice 2011 Awards by TripAdvisor.com.
The only lodging establishments to beat it were the SeaCoast Inn in Hyannis, Mass., and Cedarbrook Lodge of Seattle.
No other Route 66 establishments were ranked in the myriad other categories by TripAdvisor, including All-Inclusive, Romance, B&Bs and Inns, Relaxation and Spa, Luxury, Trendiest, Best Service, and more.
Ironically, the Historic Route 66 Motel isn’t even ranked as the best motel in Tucumcari by TripAdvisor. It’s No. 3 there as well. The top motels are Motel Safari and Blue Swallow Motel, ranked No. 1 and 2 respectively.
What the criteria is for “bargain” can’t be found on TripAdvisor, but the Historic 66 on its website lists its rooms for about $36 a night for one bed, two people. By comparison, Motel Safari and Blue Swallow both typically charge over $50 for rooms, especially during the summer tourism season.
By comparison, the “bargain” Seacoast Inn charges $78 to $118 a night. The also-bargain Cedarbrook Lodge charges a minimum of $125 a night. I can only conclude from the wide disparity of price ranges in the category that the “bargain” criteria is estimated relative to the region.
I’m happy for the Historic 66 Motel, and have heard good things about the management there in the past few years. But I don’t take a lot of stock in TripAdvisor ratings. I’ve found the site laden with dishonest and diva-like complainers, so I’d take any comment or rating with a bushel of salt. Instead, I’ve found the online reviews at Yelp to be more thoughtful and consistent.
I’ve found many of the reviewers at Tripadvisor to be whiny and disingenuous at best and bald-faced liars at worst. I’ve seen people claim to have had bad experiences at businesses that I am pretty sure were already closed for the season at the time of their alleged visit. They hide behind anonymity and malign perfectly good businesses with total impunity. Their kids steal each other’s food at a restaurant and then claim it was sent to the wrong table, and they complain when the owner graciously agrees to make them more food for free, because the second helping took too long. They complain about small cracks in the 70-year-old tile in a motel that’s on the National Register precisely because its owners have sense enough not to gut it and “improve” it with historically inaccurate McDecor. They e-mail me to demand refunds on rooms at motels I list on route66motels.com because they are too stupid to understand that the correct procedure, when you don’t like your room, is to complain to the manager — not send a nonsensical demand to a random stranger who has nothing to do with the place, and whose Web site you found through a Google search. The Route 66 Motel must, indeed, be pretty spectacular to please that crowd … but please realize that there are many other magnificent businesses that didn’t make that list because they have been falsely maligned by the petulant harpies whose comments are posted to Tripadvisor with no screening and no accountability.
The motel used to be the Royal Palacio Motel. Here is a link to vintage postcard – https://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_potter_2000/2681344278/in/pool-860055@N24/
I’ve visited with the husband and wife couple who own and run the motel several times. They are friendly and have put in a lot of time and care to make the motel a nice place. I got a tour of some of the rooms and they are in perfect condition and still have many of the vintage furnishings. The award is much deserved.
Okay gang, I think you’ve gotten wayyy off base here, when congratulations are all that is in order! These people have done a lot of hard work with their property and continue to improve it everyday, the category is for Bargain, and they deserve it. You can bash TripAdvisor another time, but unfortunately you sound as if you’re bashing all the tourists in general too, and that’s just WRONG!!!
You need to keep an open mind too, your personal preferences aren’t necessarily so, and you are not the one and only single authority on any motels on Route 66. And guess what, if you have a website about motels, you should pretty much expect the guest interaction you receive, and should already know everyone doesn’t always read all the instructions, and in fact MOST never read disclaimers – which is why they’re usually in the fine print somewhere.
If someone doesn’t like YOUR favorite motel, it makes them no less a person than you, no less intelligent than you, and their point of view is just as valid as yours.
On your TripAdvisor note, it’s just a little funny, as they are actually the single largest contributor of occupancy to your very own favorite motel, followed by corporate commercial tourism contracts. We always think it’s us roadies and our word of mouth or our personal opinions, but in this case, it’s the millions of their viewers that bring in the most. And by the way, your favorite motel got a TripAdvisor award a few years back – so what – no one else’s supposed to ever get one??? No one else is supposed to ever get to take a bow, no one else is supposed to be recognized for all the work they’ve done too? Many of which have done much more?
Congratulations are in order here, and I am glad someone else out there is not only doing good things, but being recognized for it too! We have to appreciate others on the road as well, or all that will be left is a very small handful few, and then it all dies out from there…
Congratulations Historic Route 66 Motel in Tucumcari, NM – thank you for being different, and thank you for contributing positively to our road and our community! We invite and encourage others to join in as well, and we DO NOT always want the same old place to take all the credit, while others work hard too, and sometimes feel left out of the limelight…
Lets lift up ALL of Route 66, and not just others chosen few!
Richard, I think you’re reading waaaaay too much into my story.
I am not angry or disappointed that the Historic Route 66 Motel was honored. On the contrary, I’m quite happy that it was. I think I made that clear.
My point is the “budget” criteria by Trip Advisor seems indistinct and arbitrary, to say the least. If the No. 1 and No. 2 motels in the U.S. “budget” category are two to three times more expensive than the Historic Route 66 Motel and are more expensive than either of the top two motels in Tucumcari, then Trip Advisor has a credibility problem with its own rules. What is the threshold for a budget motel by Trip Advisor? Damned if I know. That’s the whole point.
You and the Blue Swallow Motel may be happy with Trip Advisor, but that doesn’t make me blind to its shortcomings by misanthropic and slow-witted commentators. I find Yelp.com much more credible and intelligent, and I stand by that.
I’m not taking anything away from the Route 66 Motel — as I stated before, it must be pretty spectacular indeed to have earned praise from TripAdvisor reviewers, who are notoriously capricious.
TripAdvisor undoubtedly drives customers to many, many businesses on Route 66 and beyond. But I don’t trust the site itself, because I have been privy to way too many instances of dishonesty on the part of those TripAdvisor reviewers who find it much too easy to sully a business’ reputation online without considering whether their comments are fair, reasonable, or have any basis in reality. If the site wants credibility, it’s got to find a way to filter its reviewers or hold them accountable for their words. The instances I cited above were not hypothetical. They actually happened.
As to my Web site: I expect people to disagree with my assessments of certain motels. (That’s why the site states, in no uncertain terms, that travelers should inspect the room to make sure it meets their own standards instead of trusting mine blindly.) But I have exactly zero patience with people who check into a motel, spend the night, check out — never saying a word to the manager about anything they didn’t like — and then e-mail me to demand a refund on a room they already slept in. That’s not a disappointed traveler voicing a legitimate complaint. That’s an opportunistic schmuck trying to get something for nothing. Period.
Again: I am happy for the Route 66 Motel, and I’m impressed that it earned high marks from a site whose contributors are notoriously difficult to please.
That does not change the fact that TripAdvisor has credibility issues of epic proportions.
The other properties listed in the category, are in other area markets, where they may be an enourmous bargain in comparison to others of the same category in the same area – that’s how that works?
And I wasn’t just talking about YOUR comments specifically, it was another’s on here! Yours is typically as generic as you can be, and not trying to offend others. Someone else needs to re-read their comment, and understand how twisted it appears? And if I used the very same attitude, then I’d be saying something crazy like, you’d have to be ignorant if you don’t understand their ratings (I’m not, so I apologize there)?
Again, the article was for recognition of an achievement by this motel, and not what anyone thinks about TripAdvisor. It doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks about TripAdvisor, Yelp or anything else – it matters that these people have spent a lot of time, effort, energy and money on improving their property – and we’re taking away from rewarding them for their efforts, which should have been the only subject here…
As far as Route 66 goes, and since the award is positive no matter what, it contributes to and promotes ALL of Route 66, and that should make us ALL happy in some way?
Perhaps my point was lost the first three times I made it. Let’s see if the fourth time is the charm:
TripAdvisor is home to some of the most notoriously difficult critics in the industry.
The Route 66 Motel managed to impress those critics, beating out a host of similarly priced properties in the process.
That. Is. Awesome.
On an unrelated note, I am hoping to shake free to start updating Route66motels.com in the next couple of weeks. If present company would still like to be included in that update, please let me know, and give me a heads-up if there are any changes I should be aware of since we last spoke in September.
Sorry, just didn’t want to detract away from what they accomplished, we could make a whole other posting on here for our ratings on ratings, and that might be appropriate sometime?
On another note – of course we would silly! lol And will be absolutely honored – Thank You… I will send you an e-mail with everything, and if you need anything else from us, just let us know?