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This Halloween, Get Spooked Then Sloshed with Omni Hotels
Where: United States
We have to admit, we’re total suckers for a good haunted hotel tale. As such, we may just have to check in to an Omni hotel this month. In addition to offering spooky signature cocktails, the chain has a “ghost-folio” of spirited suites. And if that pun isn't enough to make you gag, perhaps a spooky stay might.
At Boston’s Omni Parker House Hotel, the ghost of the hotel’s founder, Harvey Parker, is said to pop up in guest rooms to inquire about their stay. Good customer service never dies! Plus, the elevators have “been known to” travel to the third floor, former (and current?) stomping grounds of novelist Charles Dickens, with nary a button pushed.
Meanwhile, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel’s “Ghost Suite” in DC, TVs and lights reportedly flicker on and off in the middle of the night, and sometimes guests in adjacent rooms hear loud noises coming from the suite — while unoccupied.
Tags: iPhone Hotel Apps / iPhone Hotels / Hotel Technology / Hotel News / Four Seasons Hotels / Starwood Hotels / Omni Hotels / Choice Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / → All Tags
For Better or Worse, These Hotels Have Realized 'There's An App For That'
We've been variously hot and cold about hotel chain iPhone apps. As a rule we embrace anything that can help us travel easier while already on the road, and we certainly embrace it if it lives in the App Store. But hotel apps fall into that dicey category where we're not sure that the bother that goes into them is worth whatever comes out.
Hotel iPhone applications generally help you find a nearby chain hotel and check in through your rewards account. Sometimes they may automatically dial customer service. All of which is great except people rarely book within just one chain. Price is usually the most important factor, which means using a search engine, and rarely is someone in so much of a pinch that exact GPS-pinpointed location matters.
As for checking in, well, we're not talking about flights. The hotel will still be there waiting when you arrive, and you'll still have to wait in line to get it. Checking in doesn't have to happen from the road.
Nonetheless, hotels aren't going to stop producing apps. It's just what companies do these days. So here's our roundup of the industry's current offerings. Feel free to sound off in the comments: would you make space on your beloved iPhone for something like this?
Tags: Omni Hotels / Hotel Technology / iPhone Apps / → All Tags
Omni Hotels Builds iPhone App To Help Customers Do...Umm...Stuff?
If you're a travel company obsessed with new media technologies and you've already set up your Twitter feed and Facebook fan page, what's next? If you're Omni Hotels the answer is apparently to build an iPhone App.
The new app, available from the iTunes store, allows customers to do a bunch of things that are either already effortless or that phones seem bad at doing. But at least they'll be able to do them on their iPhones.
Tags: Omni Hotels / Historic Hotels / New Hampshire Hotels / → All Tags
Omni Snaps Up the Historic Mount Washington Resort
One of the country’s oldest, most historic hotels will soon change hands. As of Sept. 1, the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, will add Omni to the front of its moniker.
The luxe 365-room New England resort opened in 1902 at the base of Mount Washington, the Northeast’s highest peak, and has notably hosted Thomas Edison, Babe Ruth, and three U.S. presidents. Recently the resort finished a multi-million-dollar restoration and renovation project, which includes a new spa, conference center, and outdoor pool complex.
Tags: Hotel Packages / Omni Hotels / Girlfriend Getaways / → All Tags
Omni Helps Shopaholics Live the Dream With 'Recessionista' Package
Girls like shopping! Girls like martinis! Girls like getting together with their girlfriends to gossip and eat yogurt and paint their toenails and discuss celebrities! Well, according to hotel package promoters, anyway — and it's no secret that the floods of Girlfriend Getaway packages hitting the hotel market make us roll our eyes more often than not.
But this one's not so bad — especially since we don't really have any money to buy clothes right now (hello recession!), and we actually do need to go shopping. Omni Hotels is now offering "Retail Therapy," a package with us in mind — a girlfriend getaway for you and your chickies that offers decent freebies and some quality girl time.
From bargains to boutiques, women are sure to spoil themselves with a prescription for rest and relaxation. In advance of the visit, the "Retail Therapist" (aka the concierge) will contact the guests to help customize their experience from arranging spa treatments for the group to reservations at local hot spots. Upon check in, guests will also receive a recommended shopping list of local boutiques, the top shopping destinations and other favorite finds to help guests shop like a native.
Yeah, not very exciting — this part is better: when you get to whatever Omni you're staying in, you get an "Amazonia" Envirosax, "a reusable shopping bag which is sure to add color and eco-chic to the trip." Each guest also nabs a full-size Laura Mercier lipstick, and a "special delivery of Champagne" comes to the guestroom too.
Available until December 31st, 2010, the "Retail Therapy" package starts at $175 per night and can be booked here.
Tags: Hotel Promotions / Hotel Tech / Omni Hotels / → All Tags
Omni's Got A Sweet Summer Amenity: Flip Video Cameras
Have you seen our HotelChatter Video Room Tours? We ask because some of them are filmed using our compact Flip video camera, and it gives you just a little taste of what you could be in for this season if you're staying at an Omni Hotel and take advantage of their "Omni Flips For Summer" package.
Starting at $175 a night at Omni properties, and continuing through September 6, the deal includes a room, breakfast for four with "Flip-jacks," access to a "Summer Fun Counselor" for discovering local awesomeness, and the option to borrow a Flip Ultra video camcorder for your stay. If your video memories are good enough for the big screen—or rather, the internet—upload them to Omni's Local Scoop website for a chance at winning a trip to the 4-star Omni Bedford Springs Resort.
To book the Flip package, check out their special page for it here, or call 1.800.THE.OMNI to see if your preferred location has it available.
[Photos: Omni Hotels]
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More Free Nights, More Free Ironing at Omni
The new Select Guest loyalty program run by Omni Hotels is already something we've been recommending, but they've just made it even a little bit better. Basically if you're planning an Omni stay, call them up and join the Select Guest program and straight away they'll give you a two-for-one stay over a weekend — but you have to book by the end of June.
Free nights are all well and good, but we're more excited by the free ironing that Select Guest members get. Getting your shirts pressed for free at Omni properties has even got an enthusiastic mention over in Britain, and at the same time the Omni gang has been busy doing some research about how much we all hate picking up the iron ourselves.
Their survey says that only 21% of people "don't mind" doing their ironing, while 15% would rather have their teeth pulled. Avoidance of ironing is common: 33% of people surveyed have worn a wrinkled shirt but kept their jacket done up so nobody could see, while 51% have bought a new shirt while traveling just so they didn't have to iron. No wonder getting Omni to do it for free is such an attractive option.
[Photo: It's Greg]
Tags: Loyalty Program News / Omni Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
Omni Beefs Up Its Loyalty Program With Tons of Freebies
The Omni San Francisco
Free shoe shines, WiFi and shirt pressings for all! Omni has beefed up its loyalty program bigtime, and today the hotel chain announced a pretty serious roster of freebie goodies that will be added on for guests in their Select Guest loyalty program at every level.
The loyalty program rewards work based on a pretty simple formula: members earn one complimentary night for every 10 nights they spend at Omni hotels; the thing isn't points-based, so it's fairly straightforward. The newly-expanded program now features three levels of memberships — Gold, Platinum and Black (guests immediately get Gold status upon joining) — and the perks are pretty hefty.
Tags: Hotel Cocktails / Hotel Packages / Hotel Deals / Omni Hotels / → All Tags
Omni Hotels Support Springing Forward with Springtime Booze
Ah, springtime: 'tis the season for flowers, sunshine, bright colors, breaks and ... booze. Oh yes. Omni's got most of our seasonal wishlist covered with their "Spring Forward" promo: booking two nights scores you a free third night at hotel properties; booking three nights at a resort property earns you a fourth night free.
And then there's the booze part. Omni's oh-so-talented mixology team has created a signature "Sunrise Booster" cocktail, which we are going to go ahead and say is perfectly acceptable to drink in the mornings because we consider it an "energy beverage." You know, like coffee. It's a delish mix of vodka, peach Schnapps, fresh-squeezed orange juice, Red Bull and Grenadine served up with fresh blood orange wedges. The orange drank debuts today (the first day of the season!) in bars and lobby lounges in Omni hotels across the chain.
Oh, and if you slam a few too many of those babies at nighttime, one more treat for you: until the end of the month at some hotels, weekend guests booking the "Spring Forward" promo get late checkouts.
The "Spring Forward" package is available until April 30th, and rates start at $139.
Tags: Hotel WiFi / Austin Hotels / Omni Hotels / SXSW Hotels / → All Tags
SXSW Attendees Minus Hotel WiFi Equals Disaster at the Omni
By now, most of us are well aware of the major AT&T snafu that happened down in Austin at this year's South by Southwest. Basically, the cell service provider was not equipped to handle the massive amount of iPhones that convention-goers were packing — not to mention the heavy twittering, texting, and emailing they were probably doing. Yikes. Not good.
And almost as bad as a big ol' AT&T fail is a SXSW hotel in Austin with crappy WiFi. Sadly, this was the case at the the Omni Austin, where one blogger and SXSW attendee reports the WiFi was mostly down. Oh noes.
Tags: Hotel Openings / Omni Hotels / Fort Worth Hotels / → All Tags
The Omni Fort Worth Now Open for Business (Travelers)
Contain your excitement people. Simmer down now. It's the hotel opening you've all been waiting for! No, it's not Edition Hotels. It's the Omni Hotel Forth Worth, a 614-room convention center hotel.
And as it turns out this hotel took even longer than Six Columbus to open--about ten years. The hotel opened its doors yesterday and guests will first arrive to spend the night on Saturday.
With a garden on the roof above its grand ballroom and an outdoor swimming pool on the third floor, the Omni aims to impress meeting planners with its Texas decor and upscale features. There are four restaurants on the first floor, a museum store with merchandise from the Kimbell Art Museum and a $1 million, three-story stone wall with staircases and escalators surrounding it.
But this hotel won't always be business travelers and convention-goers. The hotel just announced that the AFC football champions will stay here during the Superbowl in 2011. And here's another random fact: the hotel has more than 1,000 televisions.
Online reservations were not yet up and running for this weekend, however the hotel is offering a "Worth the Wait" package with an introductory rate of $99 a night. It's only good for Texas residents though, from Jan. 31st to February 28th on Friday or Saturday nights. Hmm...we think this "Worth the Wait" package is something other hotels (cough, Smyth, cough) should offer as well!
Tags: New Years Eve 2009 Hotels / DC Hotels / Omni Hotels / → All Tags
Go French in the New Year for $209 at The Omni DC
If for some reason you’re really itching to pay Washington, D.C., a visit this winter but don’t want to compete with the inauguration crowds--or, ahem, take out a second mortgage--well, do we have a deal for you.
Just days before the Omni Shoreham transforms into a money-grubbing machine for the inauguration festivities, you can ring in the New Year there for a totally reasonable $209. (That’s literally 1/2,200ths of the cost of their flashy presidential package!) And since you’re not going to get a free puppy either way, we think New Year’s is the way to go.
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