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Tags: Room Rate Drop Watch / Westin Hotels / Cayman Island Hotels / Resort Fees / → All Tags

Westin Cayman Island Offering 'Summer Spectacular' for 40 Percent Less

Where: 7 Mile Beach Road, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

The stretch of islands most famous for being a tax haven for banks, big money investors and hedge fundy type transactions has some impressively low resort rates this summer.

Starting June 1 through September 6, 2009, the The Westin Casuarina Resort & Spa Grand Cayman located along eight acres of Seven Mile Beach has slashed prices more than 40 percent for their Summer Spectacular. Nightly rates in the 343-room hotel start at $159 for an Island View room and $259 for an Ocean Front room.

With prices this cheap could Grand Cayman be the new West Palm Beach? Victims of Ponzi schemes may have lost millions but they haven't lost their taste for luxury. Hopefully this means the Westin is also dropping the reported (according to Travelocity readers) extra $20 a day resort fee for beach towels and chairs. But we doubt it.

Tags: Cubicle Dreamin' / Cayman Island Hotels / Break-Up Hotels / → All Tags

"I Got Dumped and All I Got Was This Awesome Caribbean Vacation"

Where: 166 Bodden Town Road, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.

In this episode, Hotel Maven Jenn Merritt ponders a "He's Just Not That Into You" type of getaway. Enjoy.

I was just reading in some magazine some girl's account of how she got dumped by her boyfriend and so she decided it was the perfect time to quit her job and move to the Cayman Islands. While I haven't been dumped (not as of this posting, anyway), I sure would like to go to the Cayman Islands. And if getting dumped is what it takes—well, then… There's always other fish in the sea.

I bet there's plenty of fish off the Caribbean Sea-front property at Turtle Nest Inn in Grand Cayman, and from the looks of it, there's more fish than people at this small, eight-apartment resort, which is exactly the sort of thing you need once you've been dumped.

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Tags: Hotel Blog Watch / Cayman Islands Hotel Reviews / Hotel Blogs / → All Tags

Hotel Blog Watch: The Reef

Where: East End, Grand Cayman

This Hotel Blog Watch is part blog watch and part Hot Hotelier News. The general manager behind The Reef hotel in Grand Cayman and Cayman Time blog is "Tom Cayman" who writes about life at the resort with sort of a Pink is the New Blog enthusiasm (minus celebrities) mashed with Jaunted airfare tips ("Cayman Airways $99 Return!) and HotelChatter's Google Earth obsession.

But what we like most about Tom Cayman is that he keeps it real. He talks about events and new activities at the resort but he's also not afraid to post the frequent complaints of guests, so long as he's rectified the situation of course.

The Reef is pretty well defined as a tranquil and relaxed beach resort. However, one area where we seem to get some complaints is that we don't have sufficient shade on the beach itself. Yes, every suite is beachfront (and in the shade much of the day), and yes we have lots of palm trees dotted around the place, but I guess these days people are more and more conscious of excess sun exposure, yet love the feeling of lying out on the beach enjoying the sounds of the ocean lapping on the beach and the cool breeze.

So... we've just finished installing 12 permanent palapas on the beach in front of and around our beach bar. Each of these will provide shade for two beach lounge chairs, and also be in convenient range of a cool drink from the bar.

And since Cayman Time has been around since June 2005, there's a wealth of information there about life on the Cayman Islands from both a local and a hotel perspective. The blog has even boldly dared to link off to TripAdvisor reviews on their blog roll, but of course, it gets pretty stellar reviews.

Tags: Hotel Restaurants / → All Tags

Hot Hotel Eats: Ritz Carlton's Blue

Where: Seven Mile Beach, PO Box 30620, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

While the Westin Casuarina didn't measure up to one guest's expectations, the Ritz Carlton's Blue Restaurant nabbed a mention in Travel + Leisure's top six hotel restaurants to check out.

What makes this restaurant so good is that the hotel uses 20 local fisherman to catch its seafood. The chef, Eric Ripert, also handpicks the staff, who will cook any of your catches from your deep-sea fishing adventures.

The food is French Caribbean and T+L recommends the bouillabaise which "becomes rich lobster safron fumet lapping at an aioli crabcake. The hotel also has four other restaurants, including 7 which our tipster says has a Make-your-own caesar salad bar and a specialty pasta bar, but terrible service--"as though it was the waiters' first dsay which is unacceptable for those prices."

Related Stories:
· Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman reviews [TripAdvisor]
· Best new hotel restaurants [T+L]
· Nothing to Do at the Westin Casuarina [HotelChatter]

Tags: Celebrity Scoop / → All Tags

Tony Bennett Hates Babies; Loves to Paint

Where: Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

Tony Bennett was giving a concert for the gala opening of the Ritz Carlton in Grand Cayman when a screaming baby (actually the daughter of model Kylie Bax) put him in a foul mood. But the diva 'tude didn't stop there.

The New York Post has the detes of Bennett's other behavior while at the hotel:

Hotel moles also report that Bennett, who loves to paint in his spare time, insisted that concert organizers indulge his favorite hobby. "He demanded a two-room suite - one room for him to sleep and another for him to paint," tattled our spy.

However the more pressing question is, what the heck was he painting?

Related Stories:
·Baby Irks Tony [NY Post]
·Ritz Carlton Grand Cayman Reviews [TripAdvisor]