Today's travel intel

Reader of This Just In, Corey Larsen Bauer, writes: Got a dilemma we need help with....our teenage daughter will be leaving soon to be an exchange student to Norway for a year. What's the best way to store so many photos she'll take? Should she take a laptop to download them on? Or quite a few memory sticks or what?!?! Well, Corey, Thanks for your message. You must be so proud of your daughter getting to go to Norway! [By the way: Budget Travel has often covered the country often, including this story: "Have You Cruised in a Fjord Lately?"] My suggestion is that your daughter get an annual "Pro" subscription to Flickr.com, a beguiling website for storing and sharing photos. The Pro subscription will let her upload her photos from her laptop--or from a friend's computer. That way, her photos will be saved someplace safe in case the camera dies or the memory stick is lost. What's more, Flickr makes it easy to share photos with others by email, or to make postcards using sites like Moo.com. The site is free to use and to store a small batch of photos, but you need to get a $25-a-year subscription to store an unlimited number of snapshots. However, I think the fee is worth it. When your daughter takes daytrips around the country or Europe, she could bring along a small 256 megabyte memory stick, which costs about $50 and which can be used as an interim storage device for storing a couple hundred photos (depending on the size of the images and the quality of her digital camera). If she doesn't plan on bringing a computer, she can borrow someone else's to download her photos, if her camera uses a standard cable (such as a USB cable). Another argument for using Flickr instead of another photo-sharing website is that it is owned by Yahoo, so it will have the financial wherewithal to last for a long time. In other words, by using this site, you have a lower risk of having to switch to another storage site in the near future. For more info on options, consider visiting Digital Photography Review. Another reader, Vanessa O'Donnell, offers the following tip: Another option would be to use shutterfly. Photos can be uploaded in the same manner as Flickr but without the cost and prints can be ordered directly from the site. I've used shutterfly numerous times and frequently receive "coupons" from them for things such as 25 free 4x6 or 1 free 8x10 Hey reader: If you have a helpful suggestion, please post a comment!

Moments ago, Marriott announced a partnership with Ian Schrager, the developer of some of the world's best-known boutique hotels, to build roughly 100 boutique hotels within the next several years. The partners say they will have five development deals signed by the end of the year, and that a brand name for the line of boutique properties should appear within a few months. The news is surprising because in many ways the Marriott brand is the antithesis of what consumers think of when they think of a boutique hotel, such as Schrager's Gramercy Park Hotel, where the news was announced. Marriott hotels tend to have hundreds of rooms that look interchangeable and are designed to consistently deliver a room for the night for business travelers. Schrager's hotels are small and feature modern art, unusual light fixtures, oddly-sized lobbies with wood-burning fireplaces or enormous high-definition TV sets--with no two hotels having an identical look. Even at the press conference this morning, the different personal styles of Schrager and Bill Marriott were striking. Schrager wore a collarless black shirt and a black sportcoat, while Marriott wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt with a starched collar, and a standard necktie. Marriott admitted that the guests going to Schrager's hotels haven't been going to Marriott's hotels. But, he said, he didn't see why his company couldn't attract them by building a new set of properties. After all, he noted, Marriott recently announced a partnership with Nickelodeon to build hotels that assiduously aims to please children. "And with this deal we're going after the grown-up kids," he said.* Schrager responded with a funny facial expression that quickly turned into a smile. Despite differences, money talks, of course. And the boutique hotel segment of the business has been enormously profitable. Marriott's resources--its reservations systems and existing supply channels and staff--could help reduce the cost of building additional boutique hotels, and put them with an reasonable "splurge" zone for budget-conscious travelers. Earlier: Marriott announces a deal to create kid-friendly hotels. Related info: For delightfully obsessive coverage of hotel trends, visit HotelChatter.com. Update: HotelChatter has more info on this deal. *A typographical error in this original blog post said "sad" instead of "said."