While the official grand opening blowout isn't scheduled to go down until later this month, the NYT had a chance to pop into the London West Hollywood and, surprisingly, christened the hotel with a sparkling review -- a good bit of positive press after the "meh" reviews its much-hyped Gordon Ramsay restaurant has been receiving.
Though the hotel is still partially under construction (the reviewer mentioned the rooftop pool was a no-go zone), yesterday's Times "Check In, Check Out" feature gave props to the hotel's location, acknowledged the "disarmingly helpful" staff and gushed over the rooms:
All rooms have a balcony or terrace, and I woke up to a sweeping view over Beverly Hills. The décor by David Collins Studio is both flamboyant and muted. A wall was covered with parquet veneer and chairs had faux-alligator upholstering, but the colors were washed out, and the open-plan suite felt serene.
We're big fans of any hotel review that starts with this:
The Colony Palms Hotel was built in 1936 by the Detroit mobster Al Wertheimer as a front for a brothel and gambling house.
Sadly crime-fueled antics are no longer the norm, after a $16 million renovation completed about 10 months ago. But there are still enough edgy touches to impress your gangsta' id.
In-room, photos of "nearly naked models frolicking on the hotel beds" adorn the walls, and along with a stocked minibar, you'll also find a martini shaker. Coffee is delivered to your room in the morning, eliminating the need to face the world after a long night. And with rates at a relatively cheap $209 a night, you won't need to be a cash-stacked mobster to afford a stay.
Chicago's Hotel Sax is finally up and running after a $25 million reno of the old House of Blues Hotel. The New York Times checked it out recently and has a punny review that's all-in-all complimentary. (Sample pun: the HOB hotel "changed its tune." Barf.)
We were almost more interested in a review of the hotel's Crimson Lounge than the rooms themselves, which sound decent and start at $300 a night. See, last year the Sax was hyping its attached lounge with its:
It is a dark space lighted by chandeliers and candles in red-tinted holders...The room is heavy on crushed red velvet--both on the wallpaper and on low-back chairs...The mood got livelier when a D.J. in the red patent leather booth spun danceable pop tunes from the likes of Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The New York Times follows our lead (again) this week with a stay at a property we've been obsessing over. This week, Fred Bernstein checks into Hotel Le Bleu and comes away with a not-too-pleasant review of Room 604, which is just down the hall from the unit we checked out in September.
Thing is, Bernstein seems to miss the point of Hotel Le Bleu. Saying it doesn't offer much lower prices than Manhattan doesn't ring true: A room of this quality across the river would cost hundreds more. And while this stretch of Fourth Avenue isn't that nice, the bubbly, yuppie epicenter of Park Slope is but a couple blocks away; guests who can stand to be more than 100 yards from a Starbucks should manage to live through a stay.
None of these strange observations, though, compare to his bizarre room layout demands:
Oddly, the room was designed so that there is no way to see Manhattan from the bed, which faced the wrong direction.
We're not sure what other direction the bed *could* face, given the room layout. And if you're staying anywhere in Brooklyn, hotel or not, you'd be lucky to catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty at all, let alone the full Manhattan skyline. (That's the thing about NYC, it's, like, full of tall buildings.)
Bernstein was right to criticize the service, though, even if it was just a hiccup:
The hotel's Web site says "Our motto is: `Ask, and consider it done.'" But I was denied the one thing I asked for: a second plastic chair, so my partner and I could eat our Thai food somewhere other than the bed. A bellhop told me he wasn't allowed to enter any of the empty rooms to fetch a chair.
It may be cheaper than Manhattan, but for $309 a night, an extra chair is definitely a reasonable request.
The latest in a string of achingly trendy Mexican hotels, La Purificadora is the Habita group's first property in Puebla, near Monterrey. The syndicate's other properties have opened in what are arguably more jet set locations, like Cancun and Mexico City, but that isn't stopping them from bringing trendy design and a party-focused scene to Northern Mexico.
With an open-air lobby, glassed-in pool and rooftop bar, the place stays busy, with music pumping until late, reviewer Tara Fitzgerald reports. Despite the noise, the hit-or-miss service, "patchy" WiFi and shoddy room construction, she declares the Purificadora worth a stay:
[It's] a cool alternative for design-savvy travelers who aren't sticklers for service.
Guess its great location in the heart of town--and at the convention center--makes up for all the miscues.
As the world gets smaller and we start to travel to places we'd never really expected too, the market for big hotel brands like Hilton or InterContinental just gets bigger and bigger. It's a bit like eating at a well-known fast food chain: if you're traveling in a foreign country and see a familiar hotel brand from home, you'll know what to expect when you stay there.
An NY Times article over the weekend put it this way: hotels are global explorers. If they're everywhere, they reason, we'll see them, known them, and check into them. That's why the Hilton chain just announced a plan to open 25 of its Hampton and Garden Inn hotels across Russia and Eastern Europe, and why Holiday Inn has already managed to become the top hotel brand in China, with 44 hotels already there and another 43 in the planning.
And it's not just western brands that are attacking the globe. Indian hotel group Taj Hotel Resorts might have started off in Mumbai but it now boasts hotels in 18 countries, including 3 in the US. Surely it's just a matter of time before some Chinese conglomerate does the same and we'll be able to check into a Great Wall Hotel in our very own neighborhood. (You heard it here first).
While Marriott and Westin have both banned smoking in their hotels, some properties--like The Mercer, above--have no plans to nix their inventories of smoking rooms, despite a big travel industry shift to smoke free spaces. Among the hotel chains that will be keeping their smoking rooms are Hilton, Hyatt and InterContinental, though according to the New York Times, those rooms are only 1% of inventory. (Why do we always seem to get stuck in one, then??)
And while public health types and non-smoking travelers would probably love for the entire travel industry to go smoke free, there's one benefit to chains that allow cigs: You won't get slapped with a cleaning fee when checking out. At clean-air-only hotels, big fines can sometimes show up on your bill, even if you weren't smoking in your room. (How big? Marriott charges $250 for violations, and Westin fines guests $200 for in-room puffs.)
The secret, it seems, is to make sure the hotel knows you aren't the one smoking. The best way to do it, according to Flyertalk, is to call down to reception and narc on your neighbors if you smell smoke:
I am staying at The Renaissance Dallas tonight & the person in the suite next to me was smoking up a storm.... I called downstairs...security came right up. I know this because the guard knocked on my door & asked me to stop smoking.
This week's New York Times hotel report has nothing but good things to say about Hotel K, a food-lovers haven attached to the three-Michelin-star L'Arnsbourg in northeastern France.
Though Sarah Wildman's story is ostensibly about the hotel, she spends plenty of time discussing the real reason you'd stay the night: the food. Then again, when the food is some of the world's best, we can't blame her for talking it up:
All guests are encouraged to take the 25-euro breakfast. No one refuses. The night before diners create a wish list, obsessing over selections including interesting cheese plates, charcuterie, soft-boiled eggs, baskets of fresh pastries, baguettes and preserves, yogurts, omelets, the list goes on. In the morning [chef] Klein works the room, chatting in French and cutting Serrano ham on a mini-butcher's slicer.
Because the place is out in the country, you'll have plenty of space in which to loosen your belt. Good thing, too: After breakfast and before dinner, you'll want to have your way with the free minibar.
