HotelChatter

Tags: OpenThread / Room Service / Hotel Restaurants / → All Tags

What Do You Always Order from Room Service?

Last week while staying at the W Boston, we did a little informal test of the hotel's room service by ordering our standard go-to room service food--a cheeseburger.

The W Boston's Market restaurant Market passed our burger test, sort of. The burger was excellent and cooked to perfection. However, we ordered mushrooms as our side and were served fries. Fortunately, those fries ended up being pretty tasty so no loss there.

However, we could have easily gone with a standard turkey club sandwich or a pasta dish. Or we could have really gone wild and tried a fancy entree like wild salmon or steak frites. We could have even tested the "service" part of room service by ordering something off-menu. But we stuck with our cheeseburger dish. That's just how we roll. (Unlike the rapper Pitbull, who's more into ordering the spicy stuff.)

Still, we bet a lot of hotel guests out there have a go-to room service order.

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Tags: OpenThread / Loyalty Programs / Credit Card Rewards Points / Australia Hotels / → All Tags

Have You Ever Used Credit Card Rewards Points For Hotel Stays?

We recently spent a few hours trying to decide how to spend our credit card rewards points on a hotel stay on the east coast of Australia. Something about using rewards points brings out the worst in us – we want to get the best possible value for our "money"; after all, it's taken a lot of spending to get us those points.

But we're also never quite sure if it's worth it to deplete more than half of our points on a hotel stay. Would buying two iPods be better? Or a Best Buy gift card and some airlines miles?

Aside from shopper indecision, our particular credit card rewards program offers a choice. You can buy a gift voucher for a hotel (in various denominations like $50, $150 and $200) or you can buy a night at the hotel. Choices, choices.

What would you do?

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Tags: OpenThread / Hotel Views / Killer View / → All Tags

Do You Prefer A Room On a Higher Or Lower Floor?

It might seem like a no-brainer that people prefer staying in a hotel room on the highest floor possible to get a killer view, especially when trapped amongst skyscrapers in a big city.

And if you're the competitive type, staying on a high floor makes you feel as if you have an advantage over the other guests. "Oh you're on 18? Too bad, I'm on 32. Boo-ya!" You know how some people think.

Yet there are guests who may roll VIP-style but actually prefer a lower floor to the penthouse suite on the top floor (see: Richard Gere in Pretty Woman) It's true, not everyone wants to stay way up there. Do you?

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Tags: OpenThread / Expensive Hotels / Room Rates / → All Tags

How Much Is Too Much For A Hotel Room?

The Plaza in New York usually goes for $495 a night. We stayed there for $239.

When The Crosby Hotel announced yesterday that its room rates would be starting at $525 a night, we got to thinking--who would pay that much?

Everyone has a different budget for hotels when traveling, but sometimes even folks with big bank accounts refuse to spend more than $150 (or less!) on a hotel room, especially if it's just a chain brand like the Hilton, Marriott or Hyatt. These chains may be nice, but even the pricey ones don't necessarily offer any of the cool amenities and personal touches that you'd find at boutique hotels. And many times these places give us headaches with their fugly decor.

Fortunately, a lot of these big-box hotel rooms can be found at reasonable rates on online booking sites like Expedia, Hotwire and Priceline, thus ensuring that folks can always get a big hotel name for less.

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Tags: OpenThread / Hotel Parking / Hotel Fees / → All Tags

What is The Most Outrageous Hotel Parking Fee You've Ever Paid?

We've said it before and we'll say it again--when you shell out lots of moolah for a hotel room, free or cheap parking should be an automatic amenity (we'll take that over sweet-smelling bath products). But we've found that the more expensive the hotel, the more jacked-up the parking fees.

A prime example is the Peninsula New York, where you'll fork over between $925 and $16,000 for a room, but if you want to park your vehicle there, the hotel will tack on an extra $60 for every 24 hours—and that's without any in-and-out privileges. What's worse is that most hotels don't even list their sky-high parking fees on their website, meaning you usually don't know until you pull up that parking will cost you upwards of $35 a night.

So we're taking names and making a list. Here are some other pricey-parking doozies that we've found and that our Twitter followers have shared with us:

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Tags: Openthread / Hotel Amenities / → All Tags

What Makes a Hotel 'Good For Women'?

Our pals over at Hotels.com released a list of the "best hotels for women" (well, specifically, the best hotels "for girls who want it all") — that is, the hotels with "plenty of pampering, as well as easy access to some of the world's best shopping areas." Because that's what women want. Right?

Since not all hoteliers and package-assemblers are as in tune with ladies as, say, Mel Gibson in a certain 2000 film co-starring Helen Hunt, we'd like to step in here and ask: what do women really want in a hotel?

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Tags: OpenThread / Overservice / → All Tags

Do You Always Let the Hotel Bellman Take Your Bags?

Not too long ago, we were staying in a hotel for one night and showed up with a miraculously light load of nighttime supplies. All we had was a teensy wheelie bag, one of the airplane-cabin-friendly kinds that were small enough to fit in the overhead compartment. 'Twas a load of luggage that we were perfectly capable of handling by our perfectly capable selves — but as we checked in, the bellman whisked it away from us and ran off into the night. Er, ran off into the elevator. Or, worse, stood there with us before accompanying us up the elevator to our room.

And then we have to tip them.

What are we supposed to do, though? Do we just stand there and let them take our bags? Or are we the only people on this earth who are too awkward or flustered to stop the staffers from doing jobs that we are clearly capable of doing ourselves? Are there people who never, ever let the hotel staffers anywhere near their luggage?

[HotelChatter OpenThreads are a place for readers to get in here and talk about hot stories and issues of the day in an open forum. If you are already a HotelChatter member log in to comment, if not become a member for free and comment away.]

[Photo: Digiart2001]

Tags: OpenThread / Tips / Hotel Housekeeping / → All Tags

Honestly: Do You Tip Your Housekeeper?

Alright. It's truth time.

We've all heard, at some point, that we should always be tipping our hotel housekeepers. Anyone who has ever cleaned a hotel room can tell you that it's hard, hard, hard work (hell, even TLC's T-Boz would probably tell you that) — and, you know, if you're tipping the roomservice dude for pressing the elevator button and wheeling a cart of food to your room, shouldn't you be tipping the staffer who is on his or her hands and knees scrubbing your hotel room's toilet?

Travel + Leisure advises you to do so. Always. In the T+L Hotel Tipping Guide, they write:

Recommended amount: $3–$5 a day. Leaving cash on the bedside table is fine for a one-night stay, but it’s likely that several housekeepers will service your room if you stay longer than three days. In that case, put your tip in an envelope and drop it off with the front desk manager at checkout—he or she will be sure to distribute it equally.

So, here we go: how many of you regularly tip your housekeeper and, if so, where do you leave the tip and how much. If not, why not? Be honest!

[HotelChatter OpenThreads are a place for readers to get in here and talk about hot stories and issues of the day in an open forum. If you are already a HotelChatter member log in to comment, if not become a member for free and comment away.]

[Photo: PDR]

Tags: OpenThread / Tips / → All Tags

What's the Best Way to Score a Room Upgrade?

Everybody seems to believe there are tried-and-true secrets and strategies that will result in room upgrades. And, um, as much as we travel and as many hotels as we've checked into over the course of our nomadic hotel bed-jumping careers, we've yet to discover those mythical surefire methods of scoring that fabled room upgrade — sometimes our membership in a chain's loyalty program works out in our favor, and sometimes we just happen to smile at the right person and bat our eyelashes in the right direction.

About.com has put together a list of a few tips that may help you score that coveted upgrade — which, first and foremost, includes booking a room during a hotel's off-season (fall at a ski resort, for instance) or a slow time of the week (Sundays) to improve your chances. Some of their other recommendations:

· Be persistent with the request: "If the reservation desk can't upgrade you immediately, ask again a few days before your stay when you confirm your reservation. Still no luck? Ask again when you check into the hotel."
· Be nice to staffers and engage in a sincere convo. About.com adds, "It helps if you mention you're celebrating a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary." But, um, don't lie.
· The hotel may be more willing to grant your upgrade request if you've booked a big block of rooms for an event of some sort.
· If a hotel has majorly screwed something up — your room isn't ready or the room wasn't clean when you checked in or something — use it to your advantage, but be smart about it.
· Join the loyalty program!

We're not so sure about some of these, but we do know that joining the loyalty program is a good bet — though usually not an absolutely fail-proof strategy to score an upgrade every time.

But we want to hear from you: What are your upgrade experiences? What's worked for you and what really hasn't? Have any of these tips worked for you in the past? Tell us your stories, drop in your tips.

[HotelChatter OpenThreads are a place for readers to get in here and talk about hot stories and issues of the day in an open forum. If you are already a HotelChatter member log in to comment, if not become a member for free and comment away.]

Tags: OpenThread / Budget Hotels / → All Tags

Which Trendy New Budget Brand is the Best?

After much hype and lots of buildup over the last few years, the hip, trendy, boutique budget brands have descended. They've thrown open their doors and have not been shy about announcing plans to reproduce (and some of them have already expanded at staggeringly rapid paces).

Among the new brands: NYLO, Starwood's Aloft and Element, Yotel, Hyatt Place, and citizenM, to name a few — and more hotel brands aimed at the same budget-conscious young professional getting in on the action soon (like Hilton's Home2 Suites coming up in the extended stay category, for all the hip young, savvy travelers who want to kick it dorm-style on their business trips).

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Tags: Openthread / Hotel Crime / In-Room Safes / Hotel Safety / → All Tags

Are You Safe In Your Hotel Room?

The NY Times has a bit of a frightening article out today on the status of hotel room safety. We all know that crazy stuff happens in hotel rooms but yet we never think it will happen to us. Maybe we should think again.

[N]ew surroundings often lull guests into a false sense of security. That is what happened to Glenn Haussman during his stay in October at a luxury resort in Phoenix. On the final morning of his stay, he woke up to find his wallet missing. He soon realized that someone had climbed over the adjacent balconies and entered his second-floor room through the balcony door he had left open.

Oh god, that is A)ambitious on the thief's part and B)making us reconsider all those cool rooms with balconies that we've been drooling over.

Add all that paranoia to this video that Gadling posted about how to crack open an in-room safe, we are starting to seriously second-guess our in-room safety. (That video is a little complicated to follow but it does show how vulnerable in-room safes are, if you are a whiz with a toolbox and paperclips.)

So we wanna know: how safe do you feel in hotel rooms?

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Tags: Openthread / Hotel Deals / Deal Drop / → All Tags

Have You Scored an Amazing Hotel Deal Lately? We Wanna Know Where!

We do our best to bring you all the latest and greatest Hotel Deals and Discounts from hotels around the world, but since we're also doing our best to bring you gossip, news and our humble opinions every day, we can't catch all the awesome kickbacks out there. And during these rough times, the discounts are steeper than ever, the packages have gotten more creative and the perks are pretty attractive. We want to make sure you know about 'em.

We love the tip emails and the heads-up comments about deals you've scored, so keep 'em comin' — but consider this your designated spot to share killer discounts or packages that you've found. Share the info, share the deals, share the love!

So, you tell us: have you scored a killer rate at a hotel lately? How did you find it, where did you book it and, most importantly, how do we get in on it?

Share your hotel deal info with us and other hotel geeks right here in the HotelChatter Deal Drop

[HotelChatter OpenThreads are a place for readers to get in here and talk about hot stories and issues of the day in an open forum. If you are already a HotelChatter member log in to comment, if not become a member for free and comment away.]