Choosing Hotels With Walkscore

Is it ghetto or not? Will there be anywhere good to eat nearby? One of the most time consuming parts of picking an area to stay, and consequently what hotel to choose, is figuring out what it has to offer. A helpful tool for researching neighborhoods is Walkscore, a site that calculates the walkability of an area based on how many restaurants, grocery stores, libraries, etc are nearby. While it was intended to be used by home buyers, this site is very helpful for travelers, as well.

In order to give you a sense of how you could use Walkscore, I've detailed two hotels in Seattle: the Ace Hotel in Belltown and the Silver Cloud Inn in South Lake Union. Both areas are really nice places to stay, but as you can see below, one offers more opportunities nearby than the other.

Here, you'll see the results for the Ace Hotel. It receives an awesome score, since Belltown is dense and has lots of dining and shopping options. If you're looking for a home base that ensures that you'll be able to walk to almost anything you want during your trip, it's not a bad choice.

The area around the Silver Cloud Inn gets a lower score than the Ace, which reflects the lower density of the South Lake Union neighborhood. But that doesn't mean that the neighborhood a bad place to stay. Looking for a quieter place to rest your head, but don't want to be isolated from the rest of the city? This area (and hotel) would be right down your alley. Remember, the score doesn't take into account the great lake view.

Could you do this type of planning yourself? Absolutely. However, Walkscore can help reduce your research time so that you can spend more time figuring out what you want to do, instead of stressing over where you will stay.