How travel writers 'discover' hotels

Hotel gurus Mr and Mrs Smith recently shared their secrets as to How Smith finds hotels on their engaging blog. Mrs Smith is a Cool Travel Guide reader and after she recently commented on my post Don't judge a guidebook by its cover: judge it by its author, I asked her how she selects hotels. Mr and Mrs Smith use a combination of sources: their staff, members, hoteliers, press releases, the media, Smith spies, and hotel books. Travel writers draw on a similar set of resources, dividing We our hotel research into pre-trip and on-the-road research:
* PRE-TRIP RESEARCH
1) Travel guidebooks & websites - if we're updating a guidebook, we'll start by looking at the hotels in the book, to see what's in there and what's missing. Then we skim through other guides on the destination. Because publishers like Lonely Planet, DK, Fodors and Frommers have put so much content online, we don't even need to visit a bookshop. What are we looking for? Overlap first of all. If a hotel appears in every guidebook then it had better be special or it had better be the only one in town. If it doesn't appear anywhere else, then we need to find out why. We make notes on these things which we'll investigate later in person.
2) The Internet - we'll look at the websites of hotels on our list and make notes as to which look suitable, suspect, or so fabulous we have to investigate further. We'll check hotel booking sites like Design Hotels, i-escape, Tablet, Hip Hotels, Holiday Pad , Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Leading Hotels of the World, and of course, Mr and Mrs Smith, to see if there are any new hotels that could be worth considering. We'll also do some random Googling. Occasionally we'll check Trip Advisor; there, we're not looking for new properties (as we're more interested in reviews by professional travel critics, people who spend more nights in hotels than they do at home) but rather to confirm any suspicions we might have about a place.
3) Hotel GMs & PRs - because we've stayed at, inspected, reviewed, and photographed tens of thousands of hotels around the globe, we have a lot of friends who manage and work at hotels, so we hear about new hotel openings over conversation, whether it's by email or at dinner, drinks or parties.
4) PRs & press releases - ditto; we have contacts who work on staff at hotels as Public Relations, Media Relations or MarkComm managers, or for PR agencies representing hotels, so we're on a lot of mailing lists and feeds. Dozens of emails arrive in our In Box every day about hotel openings (including invitations to launches!) See Terry's photos of the behind-the-scenes preparations and glam opening of the InterContinental Dubai Festival City earlier this year here.)
5) Travel media - we read every travel magazine and newspaper travel section there is, as many in-flight and hotel mags we can get our hands on, and frequently scour their websites. We subscribe to all the industry and trade feeds and online newsletters. I don't tend to look at travel websites or blogs like Hotel Chatter for new hotels, because generally they've received the same press releases I have, and I'd rather read the information straight from the source than someone else's interpretation. While I occasionally rip items out of travel magazines, due to their long lead times we tend to know about the hotel, and have probably already stayed there, by the time the issue hits the newsstands but their still handy for some we may have missed.
* ON-THE-ROAD RESEARCH
6) Hotel experiences - once we're on the road in a destination, we'll be testing out hotels by staying, eating and drinking at them (both undercover and through arrangement), and by doing hotel inspections. We'll also hear about new hotels this way. While the hotel PR is showing us a suite, she'll probably say "Oh, have you seen the suites at the new xxx hotel? I hear they're lovely but not as spacious as ours."
7) Leg-work - once we arrive at a destination, we'll have a lot of places to check out and try, restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs, shops, museums, galleries, and other attractions, and during encounters with people at these places, we'll inevitably hear about hotel openings.
8) Accidental discoveries - as we pound the pavements of a city all day every day, there'll always be one or two hotels we stumble upon that we haven't read heard about and nobody has mentioned. They may have just opened or may still be under construction, or maybe it's a hidden gem that's been continually over-looked or recently renovated. Either way, we'll be in there checking it out.

So, how do you hear about hotels? And have you ever discovered secret gems that weren't in any guidebooks or websites that nobody seemed to know about? Pictured: our studio apartment at the sublime Aleenta Phuket, which we experienced last October while we were in Thailand for DK.