Tag: HotelChatter Reviews
View All TagsHotelChatter Reviews / Hamburg Hotels / Germany Hotels / 25Hours Hotels / Photo Gallery / → All Tags
Inside a Room at Hamburg's 25Hours Hotel HafenCity
Okay okay, so no one guessed our hint about this hotel with the Atari game booth, but it's none other than the very industrial-chic 25Hours HafenCity Hamburg.
Confused by the name? Well, 25Hours is a small chain of design-focused hotels, but they have two here in Hamburg, Germany. "HafenCity" is their harbor city location and it happens to be the only hotel within this very cool, very up-and-coming area that's also the largest rebuilding project in Europe.
According to some staff with whom we chatted during breakfast in the Heimat restaurant, Europeans (and especially Germans and Swiss) know the 25Hours brand very well; it's rare for them to see someone like us, Americans, choosing it over, say, any of the other large chain, international hotels located closer to the city centre.
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Shower In Full View at Sofitel Le Grand Ducal Luxembourg
Our travels recently took us to the tiny country of Luxembourg, the only remaining sovereign grand duchy today. Landlocked between Belgium, Germany, and France, and with Grand Duke Henri as its current head of state, Luxembourg has one of the highest Gross Domestic Products (GDP) per capita at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), making it one of the richest countries in the world.
Having recently done our share of cubicle-dreaming over the possibility to win a round-the-world trip with Sofitel Hotels & Resorts and researching our accommodation options, we ended up at the Sofitel Le Grand Ducal, overlooking the old town of Luxembourg and the Pétrusse valley.
Be aware that there are two Sofitels in Luxembourg City; Le Grand Ducal and Europe. The Sofitel Europe is on the Kirchberg Plateau, a business area with lots of offices and European Institutions about 2km from the city centre. If you don't have a reason to be in the area, we'd probably pick the Sofitel Le Grand Ducal for location and ease of access to the old town.
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Another Affordable Paris Hotel To Check Out: Hotel Jules
Paris hotels are notoriously expensive, especially in the summer time, and especially when there’s a Summer Olympics in London. But HotelChatter Special Contributor Eric Rosen recently made a trip to the City of Lights and found a few places to stay that won’t throw the Eurozone into further chaos. Here is one of them.
The last time I saw Paris, her trees were dressed for spring…and although it’s now summer, you can still find great rooms at charming boutique hotels all over the city without taking out a second mortgage on your house…such as the boho-luxe Hotel Jules, a boutique property in Paris’s 9th arrondisement near the Opera Garnier and the city’s grand Belle Epoque department stores like Printemps and, of course, Galerie Lafayette.
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A Nice Inexpensive Paris Hotel? Sacre Bleu! Inside the Hotel Beauchamps
Paris hotels are notoriously expensive, especially in the summertime, and especially when there’s a Summer Olympics in London. But HotelChatter Special Contributor Eric Rosen recently made a trip to the City of Lights and found a few places to stay that won’t throw the Eurozone into further chaos. Here is one of them.
You know hotel prices are getting high when even a Saudi princess tries to skip out on her bill—and it’s true, Paris has seen mostly super-fancy hotel openings lately what with the Shangri-La the Mandarin Oriental and Le Royal Monceau. However, we’re firm believers in the magic of the City of Lights and that you can still find a decently priced hotel room even during the summer high season.
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Inside the Marriott Santiago
Confession time. Yes, we stayed at a Marriott in a city with many nice, independent hotels and historical B&Bs, but, as always when a major chain hotel is involved, there are extenuating circumstances. In our case in Santiago, Chile, we were down to the end of our trip budget, exhausted from an ordeal in Argentina and in need of a single night somewhere to crash before our long-haul flight straight back up to NYC.
Thus, we hit Priceline. Putting in a bid for $100, nothing hit. Priceline asked us to raise our limit to $120 and there'd definitely be a result, so we did. That result was the Marriott Santiago.
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Inside a Room at Hotel El Aguamiel on the Outskirts of Mendoza, Argentina
Have you ever been standing in the middle of a sun-drenched field or garden and just wished you could plop a bed right there in the middle of it all and take a nap? Well, the Hotel El Aguamiel took that yearning to a higher level and plopped a 6-room hotel in the middle of a vineyard, in Argentina's wine country just outside of Mendoza.
Yesterday we toured you around the restaurant, pool and grounds, but today we'll actually go inside our own room on the property, # 6.
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All Around El Aguamiel, a 6-Room Hotel in Argentina's Wine Country
We had our DSLR camera stolen in Argentina, while attempting to bike the wine routes outside of Mendoza. It was a harrowing experience we cringe to remember, but luckily we were staying at the rural 6-room Hotel El Aguamiel at the time and returning from being interrogated by 15 bulletproof vest-wearing officers to our little slice of vineyard heaven far outweighs all the negative. Yes, we can't wait to go back.
El Aguamiel is a property we chanced upon, while browsing the Argentina offerings on flash hotel sale site Jetsetter.com. Yes, we were heading in the direction of Mendoza and yes, we could totally take a couple days to chill out surrounded by the grapes that make the Malbecs we ordered from brunch 'til midnight.
At $169 per night with free WiFi and breakfast, it was a no-brainer. Sadly the hotel is no longer listed on Jetsetter, but here's hoping it returns soon.
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We Slept Like Stars at SLS South Beach. Will You?
If you follow our Miami Hotel Mambo coverage, you'll know that the South Beach hotel scene has been dominated by buzz for one hotel and one hotel only in 2012. There's lots of rebrandings and renovations and reality shows going on but nothing has captured our attention quite like SLS South Beach.
We've been dying to see how SBE would build on its Beverly Hills blueprint and what design maestro Philippe Starck could do to top his groundbreaking work on next-door neighbor Delano. This weekend, we finally found out, as we checked into a City View King Room on the hotel's second official night in business.
Not all of the suites are ready yet, but the rooms that were ready were sold out this weekend. The hotel itself was buzzing with chic guests and restaurant patrons, and there was a surplus of friendly, helpful staff on site to kick things off. We'll have more on the restaurants and other public spaces later this week, but for now, take a spin through a room courtesy of our video and photo gallery...
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Life Inside the Wall, The Marriott Beijing City Wall
A couple of weeks ago we showed you the view we had of the W Chang'An Beijing right from our room across the street. So what did our room with a vieW look like? Read more about it below.
First of all, the hotel we stayed at was the Marriott Beijing City Wall, which opened in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics and takes its name from being adjacent to the remaining ancient Ming Dynasty City Wall. Yet with 649 rooms and suites, the hotel is a massive structure, and feels like it; it's an imposing building, there are two entrances along the main driveway, and separate elevator banks per tower.
While you may not come here for a small boutique hotel experience, what you will find is reliability, and, as we found, surprisingly personal service for a hotel of this size. The concierge team and doormen look after guests very well; every time you leave the hotel you'll receive a folded card with the hotel details, and inside a number of key points of interest in the city in English and Chinese.
If you need to go somewhere else, they'll arrange everything with a taxi driver to make sure you get to where you want to go. It might sound very straightforward, but trust us when we say that in a city like Beijing navigational support is very welcome.
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How We Scored A (Literally) Gigantic Room At The Standard Downtown LA For Half The Price
About a week ago, we were on our laptop, browsing for a hotel in Los Angeles. Several called our name, but on the advice of an LA acquaintance, who recommended the downtown area as a place worth checking out, we set our sights on The Standard Downtown LA. We visited the website and checked rates for our two-night stay at the end of Memorial Day weekend. $165/night—not bad.
Then, getting distracted, we clicked out of the site, only to find, when we re-entered the dates about half an hour later, starting rates had gone up to $183/night. Nooo! So we didn't hesitate to simply pick up the phone and call the hotel's reservation center. When quoted the same $183/night rate, we explained how minutes before, we had seen the same room for about $20 less. "Well," the agent explained, "that might have been due to the Memorial Day weekend special we're running."
Oh? We hadn't heard about those rooms, which apparently were available for a much more reasonable $145/night.
So we booked two nights there and then and called it a day. But our luck hadn't run out just yet...
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All Around The Anantara Resort in Seminyak, Bali (Plus Pool Porn!)
We noticed it right away: security is tight at the Anantara Resort in Seminyak, Bali, but of course that's the case around the island. The security stood out here, however, because the hotel occupies what is possibly the best position right on the beach and naturally people want to check it out. To gain the coveted access you've got to be a guest, and for two glorious nights recently we were.
As we said yesterday in our video tour, all rooms here are suites—59 suites and 1 penthouse, with nightly rates starting around $450. So what'd'ya get for that? Flip through the photo galleries to see everything...
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If Only Our Room At The Red Roof Inn Actually Looked Like This
Once in a while we take a chance on a hotel, usually for one of three reasons: the place got recommended to us by a friend, it's super convenient, or we're just plain old desperate. In the case of our stay last week at the Red Roof Inn Flushing New York, which is located just four miles from LaGuardia Airport (LGA), it was some mix of the latter two.
Walking into the hotel, we thought, 'OK. It's a little bare bones, and there is kind of a weird plaster-y smell, but nevermind: the rates will be cheap, and there will be free WiFi.'
Sure enough, upon checking in, the rate was certainly lower than what we're accustomed to seeing across the river in dear old Manhattan. $110 for the night. And what's more, they even decided to bump us up to a "bigger" room on the highest floor, at a discount.
Off to a good start! But then things took a turn for the worse.
