Hotel news and reviews.
I’ve had several interesting off-blog conversations about hotel tipping recently. One came up in a side discussion about my issue last week with a Starwood hotel failing to deliver on a service request. (A friend asked whether I would have tipped if the requested item eventually showed up, even after the lengthy delay… my answer, YES.) Another was broached…
Vegas is fine until you get tired of Vegas. Or when you need Vegas to not be Vegas at all, but just another city you are in for business. That’s why I’m a regular at The Westin Las Vegas Hotel, Casino & Spa (formerly The Westin Casuarina Las Vegas Hotel). Arrival I arrived in a…
I stayed last night at the Westin Los Angeles Airport. It was a comfortable place to be for a Thursday night stay. I was able to return my rental car (after picking up a bottle of wine at BevMo), get takeout from The Daily Grill downstairs, and was up in my room in time for…
I hate early morning drives to the airport. Sometimes its much easier to stay overnight at an airport hotel and avoid the risk of missing my flight due to traffic. That was my aim when I booked a stay at the Sheraton Grand Hotel DFW Airport. Arrival I knew that hotel was wrapping up a…
Occasionally I procrastinate when booking a hotel. My luck is such that I somehow time these episodes when there are major events in town and I am left with a limited range of options to pick from that don’t require me to donate a kidney. That is how I ended up at the Sheraton Atlanta…
My review of the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino comes on the heels of a couple dozen other blogger reviews of the same property. A large group of us stayed at the property where BAcon was held last month. Check In We were told that all BAcon attendees could check in at the priority check…
Once in a while, I like to imagine what it would be like to be back in the world of my earlier days in consulting – the ones where my project work had me often spending one or more weeks in the same city so that I had some sense of being anchored each day…
No wonder my purse is always so heavy. I pulled the last three weeks of room keys out of a side pocket this morning and realized I’ve got a lot more catching up to do! I don’t seem to be making any headway and I have another 3-4 stays in the next ten days. But fear…
In March 2015, watch for Starwood headquarters to relocate to India as part of a month-long cultural immersion program. During the program, executives from the company will live and conduct business from Mumbai and Delhi in an attempt to better understand the culture and the needs of travelers visiting the growing business community. Starwood has previous…
This 5.5 hour overnight stay may officially qualify as my shortest hotel overnight that was not the result of A) a wild night on the town, B) irregular airline operations, or C) a stay in an international transit hotel. In the case of either of the examples above, I’ve generally known and accepted that the hotel…
Another day, another airport hotel. Sometimes it feels like Groundhogs Day around here. But then something happens that snaps me out of my airport hotel funk… that thing most recently was the Westin Atlanta Airport. Arrival After a shuttle wait at the airport’s ground transportation stop that was anything but chivalrous, I boarded the…
I love the feeling of checking into familiar chain hotels. I do not often get to check into luxury properties, so I have accepted what “my normal” looks like. And nothing screams “normal” to me like consistency. Consistency was exactly what I was looking for when I checked into the Hyatt Place Reno-Tahoe International Airport….