Tag: Hotels
Fear and Lodging in Iraq
by Jim Benning | 04.08.05 | 4:08 PM ET
William Langewiesche writes about the Baghdad hotel where he is staying in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The Ritz-Carlton it’s not. “The [neighborhood] guards come under fire from traffic on the boulevard, but this is considered to be minor stuff, which they answer by enthusiastically firing back,” he writes. “I can mention such details without concern for the consequences, because nearly everyone in Baghdad knows about this place already. Mortar rounds fly overhead destined for the fortified Green Zone, about a half mile away across the Tigris River, and several car bombs have exploded nearby (one recently with the force to blow out windows here), but so far no building in the compound has suffered a direct rocket attack.” A portion of the article is available online.
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Yahoo! BuzzThe Allure of the Atlanta
by Michael Yessis | 03.15.05 | 7:46 PM ET
In the heart of one of Bangkok’s most notorious sex tourism districts lies the Atlanta Hotel. It’s “revered as the Taj Mahal of budget hotels,” writes Terry Ward in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. Ward, who also wrote the current feature story on World Hum’s home page, recently spent five nights in Bangkok, and she tracked down the hotel’s elusive owner, Charles Henn. Henn promotes the Atlanta as a haven from the sex trade, a civilized oasis whose existence relies primarily on word passed from traveler to traveler. “The kind of person that would want to know about the Atlanta, well, would be in a minority anyway,” he tells Ward, “It appeals to a certain kind of traveler, and that’s just as it should be.”
The Atlanta Hotel: Accommodations for Writers Not on the Bestseller List
by Jim Benning | 06.07.04 | 9:42 PM ET
Thomas Swick’s excellent two-part series on Bangkok’s Atlanta Hotel concluded Sunday. “All over the world I have visited famous literary hotels—the Ritz in Paris, Raffles in Singapore—that today have rates prohibitive to any author not on the best-seller list,” he writes in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “The Atlanta, in yet another cap feather, was a writers’ hotel that writers could actually afford.”
One Night at the Ritz-Carlton? $369. The Silent Treatment from a Front-Desk Clerk? Priceless.
by Jim Benning | 11.19.03 | 9:55 PM ET
The Los Angeles Times’ Craig Nakano went to Phoenix recently to write a standard feature story about several new hotels. Wondering why the region needed any new hotels, he decided, for comparison, to visit the 14-year-old Ritz-Carlton, which rents rooms rent for $369 a night. At the Ritz, he learned the answer. His story in Sunday’s Travel section included this exchange with the hotel’s clerk:
“Me: ‘Would it be possible to see one of the rooms?’
Clerk: ‘I can’t show you a room because I’m the only one here.’
Me (pointing to two bored bellmen in a deserted lobby): ‘Could one of those guys help?’
Clerk: ‘Why do you need to see a room? It’s just your standard hotel room. There’s a bed, a little living area and a restroom.’
Me: ‘I’m familiar with the concept. I just want to compare it to other places I’m considering.’
Clerk: [Blank stare. Silence.]”
Not surprisingly, the exchange helped Nakano to better understand the Phoenix hotel market. “There may not have been a room for me to see,” he wrote, “but there obviously was room for improvement.” [Registration required to access article.]
What’s the Value of a Cheap Hotel?
by Michael Yessis | 02.12.03 | 3:38 PM ET
Thankfully for those of us on a budget, it’s often far more than the cost of a night. South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel Editor Thomas Swick muses eloquently in Sunday’s paper about Daisann McLane’s great book, Cheap Hotels, and his own experiences in hotels around the world. “A hotel is a place to sleep in the way a library is a place to read: It has a primary function, with a multitude of ancillary benefits,” he writes. “Which, in a sweet irony, often increase in inverse proportion to the cost. It’s in the humble hotels and guesthouses where you find ceiling fans, street music, motherly advice, material for a book.”
The Pleasure of a Cheap Hotel
by Jim Benning | 12.03.02 | 3:20 PM ET
We’re big fans of cheap hotels, so we can’t seem to get enough of Daisann McLane’s recent celebration of the humble, oft-unheralded accommodations. McLane’s new book, Cheap Hotels, collects her photographs and recollections of many of the places she has visited while writing the Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times. In Sunday’s edition of the paper, she meditates on their draw. “In an inexpensive hotel, ghosts feel freer to roam, shadows linger and stories are told,” she writes. “Extraordinary things happen.”
The newspaper’s Web site also features an audio slide show, accessible from the main travel page. McLane recently spoke with World Hum.
A Room with a Shark View?
by Jim Benning | 11.14.02 | 11:24 PM ET
Travelers may be asking for just such a room soon if 28-year-old hotel visionary Karl Stanley has his way.
Stanley is planning to build an underwater hotel that drops a whopping 1,000 feet below sea level and features, among other amenities, a bubbling hot tub. “I think that would be the ultimate luxury,” he tells National Geographic Adventure. “You’re hanging out in the Jacuzzi looking out a four-foot window at 800 feet, seeing sharks.”
Given Stanley’s track record, it could happen. He started building his first submarine at the age of 15. Not only did it work, but it now takes tourists down more than 700 feet off the Honduras coast. Stanley’s hotel would be a quantum leap from Key Largo’s underwater hotel. It drops just 30 feet.
New Hotels for Global Nomads: ‘The Crossroads of Our Connected Yet Nomadic Society’
by Michael Yessis | 11.12.02 | 12:43 AM ET
The Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City recently opened its “New Hotels for Global Nomads” exhibition, and the reviews are rolling in.
Christopher Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times offered a detailed piece in Saturday’s edition while last week the Globe and Mail’s Barbara Aria wrote that “the fantasy of stepping out of the you whose life you live and into someone else’s silk pajamas” permeates the show.
If, like me, you find this show potentially fascinating but aren’t going to be in New York before the show closes March 2, be sure to visit the online exhibition. The first-class multimedia presentation brings pieces of the exhibition home and showcases the Web at its best.
R.I.P. Bali Bomb Victims, Bali Tourism
by Jim Benning | 10.17.02 | 7:48 PM ET
The terrorist bomb that killed hundreds in Bali has touched travelers the world over. Jason Gaspero, for one, knew he’d never be the same when he heard about
the explosion from his home in Hawaii. Gaspero spent years teaching English in Bali, and he was a regular at the Sari Club, the site of the explosion.
“The Sari Club was, in my opinion the finest international vortex of hedonism and decadence in the whole wide world, and I say that after much consideration,” he writes on Lonely Planet Online. “I mean, you could find people from everywhere in this place: Australia; Canada; Sweden; New Zealand; South Africa; Denmark; Norway; England; Argentina; South Korea; France; Germany and dozens and dozens of other countries. It was the United Nations of drunken, sweaty, sex-crazed glory, and it was all in fantastic fun.” Gaspero insists that his will to travel will not be diminished.
Meanwhile, shaken British tourists are returning home. Australians are trying to make sense of the devastation in their backyard. And Southern California surfers, at least a few of them, say they won’t be deterred from visiting Bali, where great waves promise to be less crowded than ever.
Daisann McLane: The Frugal Traveler
by Michael Yessis | 10.09.02 | 8:23 PM ET
Michael Yessis speaks with the writer about the joy of travel, "travel pornography" and the lure of cheap hotels
Happy Birthday Holiday Inn
by Jim Benning | 06.05.02 | 12:51 AM ET
The venerable standardized hotelchain turns 50 this summer. USA Today’s Laura Bly celebrates the old chain, recalling her family’s stays when she was a kid. “Sure, a Holiday Inn was predictable. Even mundane,” she writes. “But there was something oddly comforting about knowing that if you woke up under that polyester bedspread in the middle of the night, you’d know exactly where to find the bathroom light switch.”
The Joy of Procuring Exotic Stuff from Really Far Away
by Jim Benning | 02.19.02 | 2:32 PM ET
After she returned home from her Bora-Bora vacation, Debbie Seaman contacted Tahiti to special-order the same soap stocked in her hotel room. Why? Not because it gets her any cleaner than the stuff she can buy at the local store, she writes in Sunday’s New York Times, but because its scent takes her right back to an azure lagoon. Seamen doesn’t confine such pleasures to soap, either: “When I eat bona fide Dijon mustard, for example, I like to pretend I’m back at the Paris bistro where, following the lead of the French, I first tried it on my frites instead of ketchup. I want my eyes to tear up, my nostrils to quiver, and my taste buds to revel in recognition.”
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