· CitizenM Opens in Amsterdam: Tonight is the first night for guests at the CitizenM Hotel near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. We have a spy scoping the place so stay tuned for a full review.
· The Artisan Hotel: This hotel in downtown El Paso is finally set to open on August 1 even though the owner has already put it back on the market.
· Palm Springs To Get a Hyatt Place: The developers of an upcoming Hard Rock Palm Springs is going to put in a Hyatt Place and a Marriott Residence Inn.
· 1 Hotel Set for Vancouver Island: Sternlicht and Co. are going ahead with plans for a 1 Hotel & Residences Vancouver Island at Wyndansea. The place will have 180 condo-units and 95 beach and golf villas.
With so many celebrities developing hotels these days, you may not remember that a just under a year ago, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen announced he and builder Brent Johnson were in talks to develop a guitar museum attached to a Hyatt Place Hotel in Rick's hometown of Rockford, IL.
"It's going to be garish, over the top, disgusting," Nielsen told the Rockford Register Star at the time. Following that appealing description, you may be shocked to learn what happened next.
With all these new hotel brands popping up, it's getting harder and harder for us to keep track of which has what where.
But we recently saw an advertisement for Hyatt Place Hotels that mentioned free WiFi and we have to say that those people in the advertising department should get some raises!
As we mentioned last month, Hyatt Places have been on a roll converting the old Amerisuites brand into these newer joints. Currently, there's about 100 hotels across the U.S. with the most being on the East Coast and in the South.
Another thing we're intrigued by at Hyatt Place? The touchscreen menu in the Guest Kitchen (in the lobby) where you can order made-to-order entrées, sandwiches, soups, salads and pizza 24 hours a day and use your roomkey for a cashless purchase.
Add that to the customized Google page and the 42-inch flat screen TVs in each guest room, we have to wonder: Is Hyatt Place a stealthy Geek Hotel?
Hyatt has been on a roll converting the old Amerisuites brand it bought into swankier new Hyatt Place hotels. Economic downturn be damned--they're going on a building binge as well. The company announced last week that they now have 200 locations open or in development.
You can read where all the new locations are going to be in the press release, but here's a look at a few of them to get a feel. If there's not one in a suburban office park near you, it's probably in the works.
* Buffalo Grove, IL
* Richmond Heights, MO
* Middleton, WI
* Austin Airport, TX
* Ewing, NJ
* Richmond Airport, VA
* Houston Medical Center, TX
There are a few urban locations though, including Manhattan and Salt Lake City. There's a lot to like about these Hyatt Place hotels, including free WiFi throughout, 42-inch flat panel TVs with 11 high-definition channels, DIRECTV Sports, and a cool connector that allows you to connect your laptop to the TV and watch DVDs or video you've stored.
We're not sure why the company decided to include this Hyatt Place rendering in their press release though. First, why not picture one that's already open? Maybe even offer up a video tour? Second, is it just us or does this look like pretty much every other boxy mid-range hotel lining the nation's interstate highways and strip mall zones?
We really do love a good bit of hotel Wifi--when it's included in the cost of the room, that is--and the Hyatt Place brand have done a good job of offering free Wifi since they started opening up across the US.
Now they've taken their online offerings one step further with the introduction of a hotel-industry first. Whenever you use the Wifi access at a Hyatt Place you'll be greeted with a rather useful-looking customized home page, powered by iGoogle.
This means that you'll see a page full of stuff that is probably useful to you while you're on a trip: the local weather, the evening offerings on TV in that city, information about the hotel (especially the room service menu), a box for checking flight info and news feeds from relevant websites. Plus a Google search box, of course, and a direct link to Wikipedia searches too.
It all sounds almost too convenient. Seems like we won't need to ask staff too many questions with everything we need to know just jumping off the screen at us. Add this handy service to their great offers for football fans and we're starting to wonder if we'd ever check out again.
Hyatt Place, the new boutique brand from Hyatt, is going after gridiron fans with their new DIRECTV football programming on 42-inch HDTVs.
To celebrate football season, Hyatt Place has introduced the Hyatt Place DIRECTV Sports Package offering extra room hours for maximum viewing, a full day of college or professional games and quintessential football fuel.
The service is valid every Saturday and Sunday night through December 30, 2007 so as to appeal to the college football and NFL football fan.
As for extra room hours, Hyatt Places will offer early check-in so you won't miss the games. Also, the hotel will serve you a pizza and two 20 oz. beverages and you can snack on the 24-hour guest kitchen.
This is not a bad way for Hyatt Places to make a name for themselves especially in a competitive market with Westin hotels, Hotel Indigos, etc. Now, we kinda wanna check-in to one of these places but sadly there are no Hyatt Places in Los Angeles.
With all the fan fare and glossy ads in tech monthlies like Wired we figured it was time we took a look past the automatic doors at a real live Hyatt Place.
The above is our thirty second tour of Hyatt Place Boston. While the rooms, with their promise of 42" HDTV and DirecTV are definitely worth a follow up tour, this time we focused on the much talked about Hyatt Place lobby. The promised free WiFi was smooth and was being heavily utilized by the surprising number of lobby dwellers. The "Grab and Go" kitchen reminded us of an airport eatery -- wine, beer, coffee, and cafe food were available.
Oh, and Hyatt wants everybody to call the lobby a "Gallery". Sound familiar? That is because W tries to force everyone to refer to their lobbies as "Living Rooms". Gallery, Living Room, Lobby, whatever you want to call it Hyatt Place has done a decent job dressing up what was once a totally out of date AmeriSuites hotel. And yes, the lobby was bustling with business ready Gen Xers who paid under $150 a night, so Hyatt may be on to something.
Rick Nielsen, guitarist from the 70s power pop band Cheap Trick, will soon add the title "hotelier" to his resume.
He and builder Brent Johnson are in talks with the Hyatt Place chain of hotels to develop a tourist destination in otherwise inconspicuous Forest City, Ill. The name? Simply "Rick's," a 22,000 guitar museum with an 80,000-square-foot Hyatt Place attached.
Though his guitars look like they're suffering the after-effects of a nuclear meltdown -- with unnecessary limbs, asymmetrical bodies, and wild colors -- Nielsen expects visitors to come far-and-wide to see portions of his 400-piece collection on display.
Cost of the hotel, conference center, restaurant, guitar museum, music education center, and entertainment venue is estimated at about $25 million.
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by juliana
