Why is it that most holiday cottage sites don't let you filter by "has internet access"?

[andrewducker]

I don't think I need any text here, do I?

Oh, and first person to tell me to enjoy a week without internet gets banned.

Comments

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Can you search for tearooms too?

[andrewducker]

Locality thereof? No.

I assume that some people do care about that. But you'd think that nowadays a fair chunk of people would wish to remain in contact with the world while away. Some won't, and that's fine, but surely a fair number do?

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Please refer to the userpic I used, then check out the US equivalent of a "cottage" in that sense!

[andrewducker]

Oh dear. Now I feel stupid.

And amused!

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Glad to help you learn something new every day!

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

If he has Internet access, he can get the same service (ahem) only better - (almost) nobody just rolls up at cottages/tearooms on spec these days now there's Grindr

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

You probably don't, but your subject line should probably close in a quote and a question mark. :)


However, to hear Verizon's FiOS advertising tell it, that's clearly a requirement of modern accommodations. :)

[andrewducker]

Fixed! Turns out that LJ/DW have a maximum subject line length, and Semagic doesn't enforce it!

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

They do, but the version of Semagic I've had for some time (1.7.7.1U) now enforces it. :)

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

AirBNB? I stuck in some arbitrary dates, but this is a search for homes / cottages / castles / boats with wifi for two people, anywhere in the UK.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

And now, in GBP.

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, ignore that second link. But the first one works! And you can change the currency.

[andrewducker]

Having changed the date, and the people to 10, I found somewhere rather nice. Now I just need to run it past the rest of the family...

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

Yay! Glad that helped.

[andrewducker]

Very much appreciated!

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Do the rest of the family want you to have access to the internet whilst away?

Perhaps some of them might see enforcing a lack of internet on Ducker scions as an exciting game!

[andrewducker]

If they want a weekend without me then they're welcome to have one.

(Or to cost me a fortune in mobile internet, more likely)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could spend your time offline creating a series of fake webpages to browse in the hope that they would satisfy your urges. A kind of fake internet methadone, if you will.

"Oh no, don't go into the bathroom, Mike. Andy's having a flamewar with himself in there!"

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Because the data isn't available in a clean form and nobody's paid a grunt to clean it up, I'd say :)

[andrewducker]

But they run their own sites, and they collect a bunch of data from the people when they put it up, adding one more field to the application form can't be that hard, surely?

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

But if all their existing data is crud... you end up inadvertently labelling all the old ones as not having wifi even though the body text might mention it.

Though I'm curious as to how these sites work. Are there lots of them? Are cottages duplicated among them, which would imply some sort of data harvesting? Or is it something that cottage owners sign up to in order to promote themselves?

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Sturgeon's Law, modified version: 90% of all data is crap.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Errrr.... I've been told, by some creeber who is probably correct, that "Sturgeon's Law" is something quite different (and rather stupid), so your quote should be termed "Sturgeon's Observation'.

[andrewducker]

Cottages sign up and pay a fee, much like renting a flat out in Edinburgh.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

In which case it's either that they just haven't considered it, or they can't afford to add the feature, or they don't think it's important enough.

Seriously, I get to hear about the dreadful hacks behind really big sites, companies that are part of the national infrastructure. Sites like that one are just made by letting the cat sit on the keyboard for a bit and seeing what the PHP parser makes of it.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

My primary guess is that these are mostly either run by or used by people old enough to not find internet access of almost the same level of necessity as heat that doesn't involve chopping wood.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

It's a good question. It's even more of a problem when the person you want to go on holiday with owns a one woman web management company and might at any time need internet access to remotely fiddle with servers etc.

[andrewducker]

Exactly. Many people keep liminally in touch with work nowadays, even when off for a week. And some of us get most of our news and entertainment via a series of tubes.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

To refer back to a previous post, you might also get a source of both pleasure and protein delivered by a series of tubes, if you use Grindr for your cottage needs.

Yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist.

[joexnz.livejournal.com]

Or the size of the tv!!!
I'm not going on holiday for less facilities than I have at home

No tv I could probably do, 20 inches just doesn't cut it these days!

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I agree! It's annoying.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I don't know where you want to go but www.heartofthelakes.co.uk includes internet access in their property search. I've used them before and found their service good.

And a lovely place I've stayed in Northumberland is advertising that all their properties now have wifi: http://www.gefringraphics.co.uk/coldgatemill/home/control.htm

[fub.livejournal.com]

We once rented a cottage in Denmark, and the site we used did have a selection criterium for the availability of internet. We haven't used any other sites (yet), though.

[pigwotflies.livejournal.com]

We had a huge fight (which went on for several months and involved many other people and LJ polls) about whether it was reasonable to be without internet on our honeymoon. (I was anti, Rob was pro). In the end the one we chose didn't, but we did find a pub with wifi for lunch on most days. :)

I've seen a few holiday cottage websites with internet/broadband/wifi as a filter option, but not many. I imagine more will do so in the future.

[andrewducker]

You were anti being without internet? Or anti internet?

Either way around, I don't want to spend my honeymoon (or any other holiday) on the internet, but nor do I want to spend it entirely Doing Things With People. A nice happy medium sounds good to me.

[pigwotflies.livejournal.com]

Anti-internet. Rob doesn't want to be away from the interwebs at all, ever.

[andrewducker]

I have a tendency to use the internet as a coping device - when I'm stressed my usage goes up significantly. Is Rob similar?

Re:

[pigwotflies.livejournal.com]

Yep. If Rob's stressed he'll spend hours on the internet and not go to bed.