does having identical titles help?

-- for this single search -

[the_nerd]

Recently I saw lots of hotel sites that don't care to use different page titles but still are ranking very well for the hotel name.

I guess that in one of the toughest areas SEOs should be able to rank before those real hotel web sites - but they don't. (at least for those randomly picked ones that I looked at)

Any explanation? Maybe 100 identical titles tell the SEs
1. the webmaster has no idea of SEO and is trustworthy
2. the site is probably the REAL site that should be found in slot #1 to ensure SERP quality.

What do you think?

[tedster]

I think having identical titles is a definite negative, but big hotels get so many inbound links that it compensates for the lack.