HotelChatter

Open Thread / Eco-Friendly Hotels / Hilton Hotels / Hotel Beds / Hotel Pillows / Hotel Amenities / → All Tags

Would You Trust A Hotel That Recycles Its Pillows?

Forgive us if we're way behind on this, but we just learned about a machine called the Pillow-Vac, which looks kind of like a photocopier but instead of toner and ink, it gets filled with down clusters and feathers. Designed to clean and "renovate" old pillows, the Pillow-Vac literally eats up all the dust-filled, germ-ridden, lumpy innards, sifts out the crap, and then spits everything back out into a pristine, fluffy new "ticking" (the technical term for the shell of a pillow). Pretty neat, huh?

We were tipped off to the whole world of pillow rehabilitation by Hilton Concord in San Francisco, who just announced their own multi-million dollar renovation—including brand new sustainable programs, like cold-water dishwashing, food waste reduction, and of course, pillow recycling.

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HotelChatter Interview / Affinia Hotels / Hotel Amenities / Concierges / Concierge Interviews / Hotel PIllows / Cool Hotel Jobs / → All Tags

Pillow Talking With Affinia's New Chief Comfort Officer

Where: 303 Lexington Ave [map], New York, NY, United States, 10016

Affinia Hotels is still on track to be the hotel leader of all things cute (here's a refresher: cupcakes, toys, and flower-painted walls). Yesterday, the group launched its newest customer service initiative, the Tender Loving Comfort Movement (that's TLC to you), which uses behavioral science to anticipate exactly how guests want to be treated, and what treats to treat them with.

The brand's new Chief Comfort Officer (that's CCO to you!), Christina Denihan, was on hand last night to show off the new "comfort cart," which is available starting today in all the Affinia hotels during a trial period, in which guests can try any of its amenities for free. We chatted with Denihan about her history with the hotel, the idea behind the TLC movement, and what her favorite pillow is.

How long have you worked for the hotel?

I've been working for the company for five years. I've done every position at the hotel—housekeeping, concierge, front desk—so I know the people really well. In order to ignite the TLC movement, it's important that I know all the associates, because they're the people that are going to make this work. They're the ones who know our customers most, they're here every day.

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Hotel Amenities / Hotel Pillows / Hong Kong Hotels / Harbour Plaza Hotels / → All Tags

Twelve Kinds of Fancy Pillows, and We Went for Functional

Where: 23 Oil Street, North Point, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Remember that horrible hotel room Wifi surprise of $16.70 per day from yesterday? Well obviously we paid it, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to put it up on the 'net. Moving on from paid hotel WiFi—on of least favorite things to see after entering a room—we find one of our most favorite things to see in a room: a pillow menu. How the same hotel that charges so much for WiFi can have extra free services like 12 different types of pillows makes no sense.

Regardless, we ordered up pillows #7 and #10—the "Bamboo Charcoal Kapok Pillow" for soothing and metabolism improvement and the "Pressure Relieving Pillow" for neck support. One was fancy, one functional, and we had to restrain ourselves from ringing up housekeeping again to sample the other ten.

Have you ever taken advantage of a hotel pillow menu? If so, did you go with the functional or fancy one and did either actually improve the quality of your sleep? We're curious because we're simply too tired with jet lag to remember much of how we slept, just that sleep we did. Come to think of it, a pillow menu is a perfect extra amenity for a hotel that has many guests coming in from 14.5-hour flights. This we approve of; the crap-ass pricey WiFi not so much.

[Photo: HotelChatter]

Fashion Week Hotels / Fashion Hotels / Milan Hotels / Moschino Hotels / Hotel Pillows / → All Tags

Milan's Maison Moschino Hotel to Open March 1, Will Have Pastry Pillows

After finally experiencing the first Missoni Hotel a month ago, we now have another fashion hotel to conquer: the Maison Moschino in Milan. We've been tracking the progress of this hotel from the Italian fashion house Moschino, and we know that the building is a renovation of a neoclassical railway station originally built in 1840, and now it's all set to open on March 1.

Today, to perfectly mark the occasion a few days in advance, the Moschino runway show during Milan Fashion Week was held in front of the building, with the models emerging from the hotel's entrance and walking down a red carpet, while carrying luggage and waving at the editors and press in attendance as though they were old friends. Since the runway show just ended, we don't have images of that yet, but Racked discovered some additional pictures of the interior, like these fabulous dessert pillows.

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Hilton Hotels / Room Service / Hotel Minibars / Hotel Pillows / → All Tags

Hilton's Expands Its"Requests Upon Arrival" To All

We're not sure what it means when we hear that Hilton Hotels have expanded their Requests Upon Arrival program from special HHonors members to any ordinary folk who book a room; either it was a raging success or not enough loyalty club people were using it.

Either way the point of the program is to anticipate any needs we might have and give us the option to request stuff before we arrive. Hilton divides it all up into Complimentary, Food & Beverage and Miscellaneous sections.

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Marriott Hotels / Green Hotels / Twitter / Hotel Pillows / → All Tags

Marriott Twitters, Lets Us Know About "Green" Pillows

Since we're all about Twitter these days, we couldn't help but be a little curious by this recent Twitter from Marriott.

Pillows from recycled materials? Marriott really is trying hard to be green. Way to go Bill and co.! We just hope their "crunchy" (see def. #1) outlook on life doesn't translate into bad nights sleep for guests.

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