We gave you a sneak peek of the Palms Place Hotel and Spa back in February and now that it's been up and running for a couple of months, we thought we'd check back in to see how guests have been finding it.
Over on the TripAdvisor guest reviews page, only four people have made a comment so far, but three of them are very detailed so we've got something to go on.
Overall, things are sounding very positive. While earlier guests reported a few teething problems related to construction, most seem confident that these will be worked out and everybody would be happy to go back again.
Staying in the north side of Sydney has one big advantage--a trip into Sydney means you get to cross over the gorgeous Sydney Harbour Bridge. Right now there's another interesting advantage if you stay at Rydges North Sydney, because they've recently upgraded their guest rooms to include new "Dream Beds" ... and since they found the old television sets didn't fit in so well anymore, they've also upgraded them to be 32 inch widescreen LCD TVs.
But that's not the good news. The cool part, we think, is that Rydges now has 166 old TVs (less a few that they've already given away) that guests can take home if they want. Rather than just dumping their 24 inch Philips televisions, Rydges North Sydney has decided to let their guests take them away instead, so if you stay at the hotel in the near future, you can pick up a free (working) TV.
Largely targeted at business travelers, room rates can drop to as low as A$139 (US$130) on weekends, making a free TV an exceptionally good deal. Come to think of it, the picture on our TV's been looking a bit crooked this week ...
This is a shot of the remote control at the Angler's Boutique Resort Hotel which we wrote about earlier. We felt it was important to give you a close-up of the remote (and the iPod dock next to it) which turns on the TV, selects whether you want basic TV or cable, turns on the DVD player and allows you to order a movie from the in-room risque movie list. We half expected this remote to flush the toilets, draw the blinds, turn down the air and give us a back massage. Now, wouldn't that be nice?
Blogger Davis Freeburg lets us know that the Circus Circus in Vegas won't let guests hook up their AV gear to hotel TVs. Freeburg writes:
Normally I'd be bothered by a dirty room or poor customer service but, in this case, it was a big fat sticker prohibiting guests from connecting their own AV gear to the television sets.
Five years ago, I wouldn't have cared but, with the explosion in the number of laptop to TV solutions and video cameras with outputs, this has become an important issue for consumers to consider.
What good does it do you to be able to take your PC or camera on the go, if hotels end up freezing you out by neutering their TVs?
Not that we even look at our TV when we visit Vegas but this could be a disturbing trend by hotels. Or else it's just another trick by the casinos to keep you downstairs gambling instead of geeking out in your hotel room.
We will admit we love to walk into a hotel suite and see a high-def flatscreen TV with surround sound and a DVD player. At the luxury end, that's becoming more of a given rather than something special. What about all those pay-per-view shows and movies they want to charge you for though?
According to this article that ran in the Wall Street Journal recently, hotel-room TV is struggling. Two of the biggest providers of pay-per-view entertainment in hotels rooms have merged: LodgeNet Entertainment and Ascent Entertainment. The combined company has operations in a staggering 1.8 million hotel rooms, mostly in the U.S. and Canada.
The problem is, we're now carrying our own entertainment with us on laptops, portable DVD players, and Slingboxes, or we have video iPods we can hook into the TV. So the number of people choosing to pay extra money for to see Scary Movie 4 on their hotel TV is declining. (Though we're guessing the hotel porn offerings are doing just fine. Who wants to have their luggage searched at the airport and have porn DVDs spread out on the counter?)
The combined company hopes their expanded size will give them more leverage with content providers and they'll be able to offer current shows on an on-demand basis. So if you missed last night's episode of 24, you'd be able to pull it up whenever you want for a fee. They also hope to get current movies faster since DVDs are now showing up just a few months after the theater release. Will it all work? Stay tuned.
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by amandak
