HotelChatter

There's something quite satisfying with picking a well-sharpened pencil out of a well-filled cup.

The challenge with most hotel pens is that they're rather sub-standard. Plastic, cheap/narrow barreled, inconsistent ink, common-looking, etc., are all troublesome.

Pencils can suffer similar issues (a well-known usual suspect in the luxury hotel industry had pencils that were completely unusable/unsharpenable post-initial writing). Not good. And none of that mechanical business, please.

The best hotel pen I ever found was from the Shangri-La Far Eastern Plaza Hotel in Taipei. After almost 10 years it still works and I use it all the time. It's barrel is a little narrower than normal in diameter and feels a bit odd in my hand at first, but it's first class all the way.

I have a huge collection of hotel pens and pencils from one's I've worked at and visited -- I'm not much on the pencils because if you actually use them in the room (as intended) there's not a sharpener there and therefore are as unusable as the cheap pens that only last long enough for a guest to sign the registration card.

stationery?stationary?

I like the small leather folder the Standard NY gives with a pad and pencil inside (not sure if I was supposed to keep the folder, but hey ho)

Love the Copley Square Hotel in Boston and their pencil made from recycled blue jeans!  Very cool!

I prefer pens without a doubt, but it does suck that most tend to be ball point pens that dry up from time to time.  Gimme a rolling point!

Even a lot of upper end hotels use ball point and try to hide it inside a heavy metallic case.  Looks fancy, but at the end of the day, still a cheap ball point.