Imagine our surprise when we saw the rates for June 19th: $919 for a standard king room. Holy crap.
We're all about blowing our money in Vegas, but we prefer to spend our hard-earned dollars on cocktails and slots. [SLOTS, people. Get your minds out of the gutter.]
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same city and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on April 28, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
We went looking at boutique hotels in Chicago to answer a question. How bad would the damage be if a husband wanted to take the mother of his children away for the weekend? We pulled up the nights of May 9 and 10 and came out better than expected, with nightly rates under $200 before taxes at Hotel Sax, Raffaello Hotel, Kimpton's Hotel Monaco, and W Chicago City Center.
So why is a standard at the sorta-hip 3.5-star corporate boutique chain Hotel Indigo nearly $600 (with taxes) for the entire weekend? (Not per night.) That's more than the Good Rate at Affinia Chicago, without the junior suite, the Asti Spumanti, and the edible chocolate body frosting.
They are offering an "Indigo Indulge" package pictured here, but to call it underwhelming would be too kind. For an extra $20 a night you get a dessert to split and some Starbucks coffee. Couldn't we just buy that ourselves for, oh I don't know, $20?!
So Easter weekend is upon us and if you are looking for a last-minute getaway, fake that you're Catholic and that you need to take off Good Friday for an Easter Vigil and head to San Francisco.
We looked at rates on Expedia.com for Friday to Monday and rates are looking very do-able. Unlike say Miami which is in the midst of a Spring Break/Holiday weekend double-whammy where beachfront hotels are starting at around $550 a night and airport hotels are hovering in the $200 a night range.
The Clift Hotel, which had a very scary incident earlier this month, is going for $150 a night. Since the place got so much bad press about guest safety, we're willing to bet that they are doing all that they can to turn this around. Still, we say women shouldn't travel alone here.
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on March 4, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
The odd headline above is to highlight the fact that we've got a high season week to beat all high season weeks this year, with St. Patrick's Day, Spring Break (for many public schools and colleges), Easter, and the Latino "Santa Semana" week before Easter all hitting within one 7-day period. Good luck finding a deal anywhere warm.
How bad will it hurt in New York City, where you can catch the St. Paddy's Day Parade, hit some Santa Semana festivities, and go to mass in a big cathedral?
You're going to pay a bundle then no matter what, but some bad deals are worse than others. Take the Hotel Pennsylvania, for instance, one of those decrepit and sad places milking the high city occupancy rate for all it's worth.
File this one under Major Bad Rate. The Atlantis in the Bahamas is offering a "Paradise Getaway" of 4 days/3 nights from $439. This sounds amazing, right? Well here are some caveats:
· You must book by Feb. 29th, so you have one week left. · Rate is per person, double-occupancy, based on Sun. or Mon. arrival. Got that? · It's effective for travel 4/27/08-6/15/08, basically when it starts to get warm where you live. · It's only for rooms in the Beach Tower Terrace which is the cheapest tower on the property. · Don't forget to add up to $81 per person for mandatory taxes, mandatory housekeeping gratuities, and utility service fees. Yikes, good thing we told you about hidden fees. · Weekend, holiday & peak period surcharges apply. So basically you have to ask for vacation days from work. · Worst of all, we searched several dates online and not once did we see the $439 deal. Unless the deal is $439 per night which isn't really a deal here.
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region (or this time, around the same activity) and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on January 22, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
Trying to decipher ski package deal options can require a day off from work, a calculator that handles formulas, and a handy spreadsheet. (One running in Aspen right now requires booking within 12 hours of a 12-inch snowstorm. Do we look like Weather Channel addicts?)
Many advertised deals are just a play on the old reliable bait-and-switch, however. Promise a fantastic deal in bold type, then follow it up with the real prices in small print and enough restrictions to confuse an attorney. Take the deal running this season at Park City, Utah.
The come-on sounds attractive: "$99 Nightly, Lodging and Daily Ski Tickets!" You have to read the fine print to figure out that this is indeed too good to be true. You can only get this rate by putting four people in a two-bedroom condo, booking for a minimum of 4 nights, and avoiding the 16 days of blackouts.
Of course this is the lowest category on their option menu too, which probably means a fading unit far from the slopes. (Hopefully no paneling in the living room or macrame art on the wall.) You'll pay quite a bit more per person to upgrade to a nicer condo in a better location.
If you are between jobs and have lots of time to sort all this out (there are no direct links to lodging options from the deals page), one of the packages could still end up being a decent find for the budget. But we only have so many hours in a day....
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on January 15, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
We've said it before and we'll say it again: any hotel package featuring the words "romance," "honeymoon," "lovers," or "amour" is likely to be a raw deal. This is especially true with the big corporate chains run by accountants. Pull out a calculator and you find that you are paying a serious premium for those extra chocolates or that bottle of bubbly.
Take the current "Amour" package currently being pushed hard by the Hyatt chain. At their Hyatt Cancun Caribe resort the French word for love means paying $42 to $61 extra per night, mostly just for breakfast.
The screen shot here was taken from the Hyatt site's rate details when we went to book a 3-night stay around Valentine's Day. At every room category, the Amour Package added $125 to $183 over the cost of just a regular room with no extras: starting at $264 a night.
For that amount you get an unspecified bottle of sparkling wine, some strawberries, and daily breakfast. Ouch. Book a regular room instead and put that $42 to $61 a night toward some nice romantic dinners. Make your own amour and you'll be better off.
[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on November 6, 2007 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]
If you're going to historic Plymouth, MA over Thanksgiving, do you really want to sleep in a below-average chain hotel room with lousy breakfasts?
On the official site the Comfort Inn Plymouth motel is listed as "conveniently located just minutes from historic waterfront attractions," which here translates to "next to a non-descript highway and nothing is within walking distance."
· "Your view is either of Samoset St., a long street of chain malls that used to be Route 44 before they built a bypass recently, or of low-income housing on the back."
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"The pool was so cloudy you couldn't see your feet."
· "The woman in charge of the breakfast area clearly disliked her job and they did not replace many food items that had run out. The coffee was worse than mud."
You get the idea. The lowest rate we could find anywhere over Thanksgiving weekend was $119 at the hotel's own website. On the other booking sites we didn't see anything under $149 unless we were a member of AAA or AARP.
So book direct if a ho-hum motel by a highway is your idea of the best bet in historic Plymouth. Otherwise check into one of the Bed and Breakfasts with character, good chow, and a location good for strolling--this week's Good Rate.
