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'Pay Attention If You're Winning': The Silent Slot Machines at The Ritz London
The Ritz Club inside The Ritz London in Piccadilly Circus is a members-only club that features a swank old-school bar, an award-winning restaurant and get this, a casino that's open daily from 2pm to 6am. 6am!
There's an annual membership fee but if you're a guest of the hotel and you're over the age of 18, you can pop into the Ritz Club to hang out, completely gratis.You can even bring along up to six guests, which is an excellent perk for business travelers. (We're not so sure six of your rowdy 18-year-old friends would be very welcome.)
The dress code is simply "smartly dressed", no topcoat and tails needed but gentlemen guests are asked to wear jackets while dining.
Yet there is nothing casual about the Ritz Club. It is a lavish, gilded space that evokes the grand Edwardian casinos of Europe. Think chandeliers, heavy drapes, elaborate rug patterns, uniformed staffers, more chandeliers and more heavy drapes.
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Hooping It Up In Your Hotel Room Encouraged at The Muse Hotel
When we first saw the words "Hoop There It Is," we thought we were in an early ’90s time warp and wondered if Miami bass was back on the charts. But no, it’s just another wacky hotel amenity promotion—this time, courtesy of Kimpton’s The Muse Hotel in New York City.
Riding the tails of yet another resurgence of hula-hoop fitness (doesn’t it seem that this comes around every three years or so?), The Muse is offering a “Hoop There It Is” amenity basket, with all the goodies you need to get hula-ing: a hoop, a hula-hoop workout video (we think they probably mean DVD) and a small towel. Because, after all, hula-hooping burns between 150-200 calories in half an hour. Totally sweat-inducing.
Sure, it’s gimmicky, but we actually like the idea of hula-hooping it up in our hotel room. Doing all of those “take it on the road” workout routines seem so boring in comparison. The Kimpton folks reminded us that even Michelle Obama has taken to hula-hooping recently, racking up 142 swivels during a kids’ fitness event on the South Lawn of the White House a couple of weeks ago.
But more importantly: how many swivels can Muse Director of Pet Relations Ginger do? We’ll make that our goal before we reward ourselves with a cocktail at the bar.
The “Hoop There It Is” basket is available free-of-charge upon request. A room at the Muse this Friday night starts at $329.
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Read Next Year's Hot Books Today at Las Ventanas in Mexico
We’ve been following the Hotel Bookshelves craze for awhile now, and for good reason. We’re fans of anything that lightens our carry-on load, so books in our room or lobby are welcome. We like to leaf through those big, sexy art books that hotels like the Cooper Square and the Greenwich Hotel in New York stock bedside, and occasionally we might reacquaint ourselves with a classic while we wait for room service.
But the best thing about the books available for guests at Las Ventanas al Paraíso in Los Cabos, Mexico is the fact that you can read them before anyone back home. As we mentioned when the resort first introduced its Hot Type Menu, an arrangement with top publishing houses means that the Las Ventanas library features books six weeks to six months before their official publication date.
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Inside The Plush Screening Room At theWit Chicago
What are the hot hotel amenities right now? Forget heated towel racks and pet concierges, the screening rooms are it. In New York, the newest private screening room can be found in the Crosby Street Hotel, but the 40-guest "Screen" venue in theWit Hotel in Chicago has it beat by a clear mile; it's no wonder the NYT loved their stay here so much.
Now we've been in the Sony screening rooms and other private movie niches in New York, and our peek at theWit's Screen had us craving popcorn and a good drama far more than any other. For one, the seats fully recline with footrests, cupholders and swing-out trays for your nachos. In the last few rows, the chair are replaced by full-fledged couches with throw pillows and sidetables. If we could come to Screen whenever we wanted, we'd never watch a movie in our living room again.
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Fireside Butlers at the Taj Boston Are Getting Ready to Light Your Fire
With the days starting to get cooler, the Taj Boston is ready to start its Fireside Season on October 15. We've always been tickled by hotel rooms with fireplaces, even if we never actually need to light the fire. But the Taj has gone above and beyond by employing Fireside Butlers. Yes, butlers whose sole job is to make sure your fire is burning bright.
And not only that, but they've got some fireside specials going, starting next week and going right through to April 1 next year.
The Fireside Tailgate deal is for sports lovers – rather than brave the cold to watch a game in the flesh, the Taj Boston suggests you "tailgate" it next to the fireplace in your hotel room, where you can watch it on the 42-inch flatscreen and enjoy an in-room "picnic" with choices like chicken pot pie, clam chowder or a Kobe beef burger, along with drinks of your choice.
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The Best Things at Hotels Are Free, Says AKA
AKA Hotel Times Square.
Just call the next AKA hotel you book a stay at the "Land of the Free, Home of the Guest Perk." There's nothing like a good freebie to get the masses riled up, especially in this age of pinching pennies, downsizing luxuries, and silently repeating the "Money doesn't grow on trees" mantra that your parents may have hammered into your head growing up.
Abiding by the principles of Recessionomics, AKA Hotels is throwing in more free perks along with those mini bottles of shampoo and body wash that some guests secretly squirrel away after checking in. In our opinion, there are some things that should inarguably come with the price of the room, like Wi-Fi access, which the AKA promises us 'net addicted types.
Also making the list of gratis benefits are free Club breakfast, including La Colombe coffee and tea service all day long, use of on-property fitness centers plus a complimentary consultation with trainer Amie Hoff (in the New York area), laundry service with free detergent and fabric softener, and the kicker, a one-year free membership to Zipcar. We're kind of "Wahoo!"-ing as we type this.
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Guests Get Free Bay Cruises at San Diego's Bahia Resort
Tons of hotels have amenities like fitness rooms and pools. But the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego offers an unusual perk: free cruises in lovely Mission Bay.
Located on a secluded 14-acre peninsula, the hotel is in a prime spot for a cruise. The Bahia takes advantage of the location with its Bahia Belle, a turn-of-the-century, Mississippi-style sternwheeler that circles the bay in a 45-minute to one-hour cruise.
The boat makes stops at the hotel and its sister property the Catamaran Resort Hotel, whose guests also get a complimentary cruise. You can disembark and head into Catamaran's Moray's Lounge for some free live jazz piano on Fridays and Saturdays. But there's no need to leave the ship to hear some tunes, as the cruise offers live swinging blues, DJs and dancing.
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GEM Hotels Want Guests To Get To Know Their Neighborhood
The GEM Hotel Chelsea
Though they only opened less than a year ago, the three boutique GEM Hotels in Manhattan have been busy with promotions. So far, the brand has three properties in Manhattan: Chelsea, Soho, and Midtown West, with a fourth property to open off Union Square in 2011.
Back in June, we hit up the hotel's GEM Hotel Chelsea which we liked very much. What the hotel room lacked up in size, it definitely made up for in amenities and free perks. Haven't checked out a GEM Hotel yet? Amuse yourself with the chain’s very…musical…web site.
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Goodbye, Brownies on The Pillow: Hotels Ditch Services in an Effort to Save Some Cash
The Gramercy Park Hotel, which by the way, is still a five-star hotel.
All of the sudden the outlook for the hospitality industry seems to have gone from bad but with hope on the horizon, to worse with drastic cost-cutting measures now taking place.
Indeed, 2009 has been one of the worst years in history for hotels but yet the best year for travelers looking for steep deals. However, just because you got that five-star hotel for half of its usual price, doesn't mean you'll be getting all the perks you'd expect.
A new report says that hotels have begun dropping stars from their star ratings so that they can reduce their level of services and save money. Some hotels that have already done this? Starwood and Hilton Hotels. And here's why.
Hotel operators need to reduce services to conserve cash. Occupancy rates for luxury hotels worldwide fell to 57 percent in the year through July from 71 percent in the same period a year earlier, a bigger drop than for other types of accommodation, according to Smith Travel Research.
The average daily room rates at the most luxurious hotels around the world dropped 16 percent to $245.13, the Tennessee- based hotel-data company estimates. Prices for mid-range hotels fell about 13 percent to $87.12.
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Five Things We Love (And A Few We Hate) About Roomers Hotel Frankfurt
HotelChatter's Eric Rosen recently spent some time in Austria and Germany. All this week, he'll be rounding up his hotel observations. Any tips, suggestions, questions? Let us know.
During a recent trip to Germany, we got the chance to check out the city’s newest Design Hotel, Roomers (from the same folks behind The Pure and The Bristol). Check out the resumé of our love-hate relationship with the hotel below.
First, the love…
Rotating TV Sets!: Call us a sucker for fancy gadgets…or maybe just the fact that we can’t live without our BBC World while we primp for a night out, but we absolutely love the swiveling flat-screen TVs that let you watch German language soaps with equal ease from the bed or from the bathroom sink.
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K`oa Kea’s Beds Could Tame Our Bed-Hopping Ways
We admit it, we’ve slept around with the best of them: Frette and Sferra Bro.; Bellino and Dwell; Egyptian; Turkish. We’ve had no qualms getting horizontal with them, especially when they bring a high thread count to the bedroom.
Despite all our one night stands (and extended stays on occasion), we've gotta say, we think K`oa Kea Hotel & Resort at Po’ipū Beach is onto something with their custom beds.
Tags: Hotel Renovations / Los Angeles Hotels / Westin Hotels / Hotel Amenities / In-Room Coffee / → All Tags
LA's Westin Bonaventure Is Getting Some Very Necessary Renovations
The Westin Bonaventure has caught our attention as of late for all their frantic Twitter deals but it's never really been top on our list of Los Angeles hotels to visit, or even on our list of Downtown Los Angeles hotels to visit. This is despite the hotel being a Westin brand with its relaxing, white tea scents and those coveted SPG points and despite the hotel's revolving cocktail lounge at the top of the hotel.
Still the Twitter deals had us intrigued so we decided to head downtown the other week and see what was new at the hotel. We are happy to report that there's a lot in the works. But the key words are: "in the works."
The hotel was built in 1976 by architect John Portman who created four separate towers of hotel rooms (there's over 1,300 in total) that are joined together by a large atrium at the ground level. This serves as the hotel's lobby as well as a sort of shopping plaza where about 42 shops and restaurants have opened.
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