Tag: Hotels
An End to the Hostile Hostel?
by Sarah Schmelling | 08.17.06 | 11:57 AM ET
The cramped, shared spaces. The mysterious substances you step in as you traverse the maze of hallways to the tiny bathroom. The odd odors coming from the snoring stranger in the bunk below. Could all this fun at hostels become a thing of the past? According to an article in Sunday’s San Diego Union-Tribune by Bob Tedeschi, longtime backpacker haunts have greatly improved during the past few years, thanks to a push from hostelling organizations around the world. New amenities include Wi-Fi access, smaller and sometimes private suites, Jacuzzis and garden views—not to mention higher standards in cleanliness, safety, and even property-manager helpfulness. Proponents of the push, like Hostelling International, which represents 4,000 hostels in 60 countries, now send inspectors regularly to member affiliates to ensure they conform with high-level requirements. “They’re absolutely getting better,” Mark Vidalin, marketing director for Hostelling International USA, told Tedschi. “There’s been a recognition that hostelling has reached critical mass and gone beyond just cheap places to stay.”
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Yahoo! BuzzStarwood to Debut its New Aloft Hotels with a Virtual Aloft Property in ‘Second Life’ Virtual World
by Michael Yessis | 08.16.06 | 6:01 AM ET
This is fascinating: Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the corporation behind Sheraton, W Hotels and other properties, will open its first Aloft hotel next month within the Second Life virtual world. The virtual Aloft will be patterned after the real-world Aloft hotels, a new brand of properties that emphasizes social interaction and is scheduled to debut sometime in 2008. According to a News.com story by Nicole Girard, Starwood plans to make the virtual Aloft profitable on its own within Second Life and also to use it to gain feedback for the development of the real-world Aloft.
Ballet for Bellhops
by Michael Yessis | 06.20.06 | 7:31 PM ET
Bellhops at Washington D.C.‘s Hotel Palomar are learning lessons in classical ballet in advance of the hotel’s September opening. “It’s a ... uh ... different experience,” bellboy-in-training Alvin Green tells the Washington Post’s Adriane Quinlan. It’s part of a trend by boutique hotels to develop themes other than “Hand over credit card, get key.”
Smell This! Westin’s Unique Ad Campaign.
by Jim Benning | 03.30.06 | 12:28 PM ET
My wife, Leslie, has a game she likes to play. Every once in a while, she dabs on some lotion from one of the hotels where we’ve stayed in recent years, rubs it into her hands and holds them up to my nose. “Where’s this from?” she demands with a grin. I take a whiff. My olfactory glands spring into action. Messages are relayed from my nose to my brain, and I find myself saying something like, “Maui. Definitely that place on Maui.” Or: “Is that from the hotel in Guadalajara?” More often than not, to my surprise, I’m right. The nose knows. Westin Hotels & Resorts must know this, too.
For Sale: Used Hotel Furnishings
by Michael Yessis | 03.29.06 | 1:53 PM ET
USA Today’s Roger Yu reports that the market for used hotel furniture is hot. As hotels upgrade their amenities, liquidators are buying up the old TVs, desks and other furniture and selling the items to the public. Yu writes that deals abound: a 27-inch color TV for $60, an eight-drawer armoire for $299, a TV credenza for $450. He’s also put together a list of hotel liquidators with showrooms around the country.
Germany’s Ostfriesland Hotel to Charge Guests By the Kilo
by Michael Yessis | 03.21.06 | 10:58 PM ET
The cost: half a euro per kilogram. At current exchange rates, that’s about $.60 for every 2.2 pounds. A bargain if you’re tiny. Not so much if you’re jumbo sized. And that’s hotel proprietor Juergen Heckrodt’s point. “I had many guests who were really huge, and I told them to slim down,” the owner of the three-star establishment in Norden told Reuters. “When they came back the year after and had lost a lot of weight they asked me, what are you going to do for me now?” Heckrodt hopes his gimmick will help inspire Germans to become healthier.
So Long, Hotel Minibars. Good Riddance.
by Jim Benning | 03.10.06 | 1:43 PM ET
I’ve never taken an item from a hotel room minibar. Five dollar sodas? Ridiculous. Four dollar candy bars? No way. As far as I’m concerned, the things are just a waste of space. And don’t get me started on the hotel staff that knock on your door, waking you from a perfectly good afternoon nap, to ask whether your minibar needs refilling. Let me nap in peace! So I was delighted to read in USA Today that an increasing number of hotels are giving up on minibar price gouging and emptying the little fridges so guests can actually use them for their own drinks or other items. It turns out, ironically, that some hotels are finding the minibars to be big money losers. The pricey drinks and snacks often don’t generate enough revenue to justify staff time refilling them.
$20 Million for Bedbug Bites?
by Jim Benning | 03.09.06 | 7:48 PM ET
A couple is suing the Nevele Hotel in New York’s Catskills for $20 million, claiming they suffered more than 500 bedbug bites during a July stay. Yikes. That’s a lot of bites—and a lot of money. We’re not entirely surprised to hear about the bugs, though. As we noted here, the New York Times reported last year that bedbugs were “spreading through New York like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.”
Rio de Janeiro: The Little Slum Inn
by Jim Benning | 03.06.06 | 1:12 PM ET
Talk about slumming. That’s exactly the experience operators of The Little Slum Inn are selling to travelers in Rio. The five-room hostel is located in the midst of one of the city’s impoverished favelas—prime real estate, apparently, if you’re a backpacker with an urge to experience one of Rio’s grittier neighborhoods. According to a Reuters report, “adventurous tourists, mainly from Germany, France and the United States,” are staying at the hostel in Pereira da Silva. “This place isn’t for wimps,” the inn’s co-owner told Reuters. “If you are uptight, you can go stay at the Copacabana Palace.” A bed goes for $15 a night, doubles go for $35.
Hooters Casino Hotel Opens Today in Las Vegas
by Michael Yessis | 02.03.06 | 4:51 AM ET
First came the airline. Now comes what the folks over at the Best Week Ever are calling “a place for boobs to go.” The new Hooters Casino Hotel takes the place of the Hotel San Remo, just off the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, and will be hosting grand opening festivities all weekend.
The Lost Liberty Hotel: “Part Political Statement and Part Pipedream”
by Michael Yessis | 01.23.06 | 1:05 AM ET
A group of activists—heroes or wackos, depending on your point of view—descended upon Weare, Vermont this weekend in an effort to rally support to turn U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s 200-year-old farmhouse into an inn they plan to call the “Lost Liberty Hotel.” The Ayn Rand-inspired objectivists and Libertarians that make up most of the group are protesting the Court’s recent decision favoring government power to take private property by eminent domain. What better way to make their point, they say, than attempting to seize the private property of one of the Justices who voted to make such an action possible?
Rick Steves: “If the Bed is Too Short, You Are Too Long”
by Jim Benning | 01.20.06 | 1:50 PM ET
I didn’t come across anything I didn’t already know about Rick Steves in yesterday’s Bellingham Herald profile, but I loved this quote about the bed. It perfectly summarizes Steves’ relentlessly upbeat approach to travel—an approach we could all benefit from when inevitable travel disappointments arise.
Rick Reilly on the Palms’ Hardwood Suite
by Michael Yessis | 01.19.06 | 6:07 AM ET
It’s only $50,000 a night, a bargain for what Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly calls the “hardworking NBA star, trying to feed [his] family on $9 million a year.” Reilly devoted his entire column last week to the outrageously expensive suite at the Palms in Las Vegas, which features, among other things, three “NBA sized” Murphy beds and a basketball court. His column is, as usual, quite funny. Unfortunately, it’s available online only to SI’s subscribers, but the magazine has made a slide show available. Beware of image two: Reilly wrapped around a stripper pole.
L.A.‘s Ambassador Hotel: It’s Gone
by Michael Yessis | 01.18.06 | 1:33 PM ET
The last bits of the famed hotel have been cleared away and The Ambassador is officially no more. The Ambassador’s Last Stand will be hosting a wake next Tuesday at the HMS Bounty, the bar across the street from the hotel’s former location.
Key Notes
by Michael Yessis | 01.17.06 | 1:14 AM ET
I just returned from a long weekend in San Francisco, where I stayed at the travel-themed Hotel Carlton. It’s got many great touches—globes throughout the lobby, travel photos hung on the walls, maps and postcards decorating the interior of the elevators—but I liked the hotel’s room key cards most.
Farewell to The Stardust, Castaways
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.06 | 1:58 AM ET
Las Vegas said goodbye to another of its old-time hotels today. Castaways, formerly known as The Showboat, endured for almost 50 years before succumbing to crippling debts after 9/11. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has the story—and the video of the implosion. Next up on the list of old Vegas hotels set for closure: The Stardust.
Update: Farewell to L.A.‘s Ambassador Hotel
by Michael Yessis | 01.06.06 | 7:24 AM ET
Only a small portion of the famed hotel still remains, and The Ambassador’s Last Stand has the latest photos of the demolition. Readers have also sent in a couple photos of the pantry where Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968.
Farewell to L.A.‘s Ambassador Hotel
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.05 | 6:02 PM ET
Not too long ago I took a drive east along Wilshire Boulevard from Koreatown to downtown, a part of Los Angeles that many people seem to be avoiding these days. It’s just too painful for a lot of them, Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, recently told the L.A. Downtown News. The reason: That’s where the demolition of the Ambassador Hotel, a Los Angeles landmark since 1921, is currently taking place.
Kabul’s New Five-Star Hotel
by Jim Benning | 11.09.05 | 1:30 PM ET
We just noted the new luxury hotel planned for Baghdad. Not to be outdone, Kabul hosted the opening of a five-star hotel this week, complete with a swimming pool, health club and pastry shop. It’s apparently just the latest sign of progress in Afghanistan. An AP story about the hotel also notes the opening of a fancy Kabul shopping mall this year with the nation’s only escalators. Remarked Ahmad Jan, a 23-year-old tailor visiting from out of town, “I am amazed by these moving stairs.”
Iraq: Danger Zone or Ideal Spot for a “Seven and a Half Star” Tourist Hotel?
by Michael Yessis | 11.08.05 | 4:29 AM ET
Should Robert Young Pelton revise his list of no-go travel zones? Central Iraq, which he recently cited as the top spot on the planet to avoid visiting, has actually seen a rise in travelers, according to Kim Sengupta’s story in The Independent.