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Sunday, April 25, 2010

Oyster's Best Luxury Hotels of 2010

Oyster recently posted its 2010 list for the Best Luxury Hotels in the selected locations of Boston, Dominican Republic, Hawaii, Jamaica, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Orlando, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.  The feature ranks 90 of the best hotels in terms of their rooms, service, food, and many other features.  The list is a bit Four Seasons heavy, but hey, they are great hotels no matter where they are.  Here's the listing of the top rated hotels in each of the destinations:

Boston: Four Seasons Boston
Dominican Republic: Sivory Punta Cana
Hawaii: Four Seasons Maui
Jamaica: The Caves
Las Vegas: The Bellagio
Los Angeles: Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons
Miami: The Setai
New York: The New York Palace
Orlando: Ritz-Carlton Orlando Grande Lakes
San Francisco: The St. Regis San Francisco
Washington D.C.: The Jefferson

It would be great to see this list expanded when Oyster begins to feature more cities.  This is a great resource for finding luxury hotels in the featured locations and is a bit more manageable than some of the other resources that feature hundreds and thousands of hotels to browse.  There are also lists featuring the best boutique hotels, business hotels, spa hotels, and other categories if you're interested in browsing other themes.  More on The Setai in the future.  For more information on Oyster, see post from March 8.

.sb06

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Featured Article - Best Business Hotels in NYC, Boston, and D.C.

From time to time, I will feature articles from other sites and blogs as I come across interesting ones.  For the most part, I will try to share articles that feature a particular category of luxury hotels or an in-depth look at a particularly interesting hotel.  This week, I'd like to share with you an article from the The Suite Life Blog, which features some suggestions for nice business hotels in three often frequented cities in the Northeast: New York City, Boston, and Washington D.C.  You can check out the article here.  In addition, I have added the Perfect Escapes site to the resources listed at the bottom of the page.


The article offers options in each city at what it calls moderate and luxury levels and also lists links to other favorite business hotels in Chicago, San Francisco, and Hong Kong.  For Boston, the article suggests The Charles Hotel at the moderate level and the XV Beacon at the luxury level.  For NYC, the Affinia Shelburne and The Benjamin Hotel are the locations of choice.  Finally, the article serves up The Churchill Hotel at the moderate level and Kimpton's Hotel Palomar for D.C., which ironically was also featured recently on the TripKick blog and has a great restaurant called Urbana I check out during restaurant week.  I think of the three cities, I love what the Boston selections have to offer the most, and they both have great individual websites so be sure to check them out!

More on The Suite Life Blog and Kimpton Hotels in the future!

.sb06

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

A Luxury Hotel Search Story -- Casa Velas, Puerto Vallarta Mexico

Google has just released a new capability on YouTube to create Search Stories.  It's basically an easy tool that allows you to make short videos about a series of Google searches, which include the web, maps, images, news, blogs, product search, and books.  You can add one of the categorized soundtracks to your video and...there it is!  You now have your own personal search story video that you can upload to YouTube and share with your friends and family.

So I got the idea to do my own search story with a luxury hotel theme to it.  The story basically shows what I might search for in planning my own trip to a luxury hotel destination.  I don't want to spoil the story so check out my Luxury Hotel Search Story video!  What would your luxury hotel search story look like?  Please post your videos!

.sb06

Monday, April 5, 2010

First Review - Hilton Garden Inn (Atlanta, GA)

Hey everyone,

I took a trip to Atlanta a couple of weeks ago and stayed at the brand new Hilton Garden Inn, located on Baker Street in Centennial Park near the Aquarium and new World of Coke.  This is the first review for Hotel Hopper, so as a guideline of how I intend to look at things, be sure to check out the rating guidelines page for a more detailed explanation of the review process.  To reiterate, a rating of 5 in a category means that is what you would expect from a typical luxury hotel.  So a 5 is actually pretty good, and a 10 means the hotel far exceeded expectations. A 1 doesn't mean the hotel was bad, it just means the hotel can't compete with the best of the best.  Here's the story on the new Hilton Garden:

Overall (2):  A great place to stay.  Reasonably priced, great location, and very practical.  However, I would argue that this is more of a higher end 'regular' hotel and would not qualify as a luxury hotel.  You certainly would not find this hotel in the Kiwi Collection. But, I won't give it a 1 because they did do a nice job in a couple of the categories as you will see.

Room (2): Decent sized room, although it was oddly rectangular in shape, almost like a hallway.  It did have two big windows and a great view of Atlanta.  Bonus for beds with adjustment controls for firmness for each side.  Nice 32" flat panel TV and also an alarm clock with an auxiliary port for an iPod or other .mp3 player.  The room had a workspace with an office chair and a desk, and also offered complimentary high-speed wireless internet and Ethernet.  There was also another lounge chair in the room if you don't like hanging out in the bed for too long.

Bathroom (3):  This is one area where I though they did a pretty good job.  Nice modern fixtures and a huge tub/shower combination with good water pressure and temperature.  But again, I still think it falls short of what I would call a luxury bathroom.


Lobby (2): Nothing overly special here, but it helps that the lobby is brand new.  There is also a fairly large flat screen TV, lounge seating, and a convenient store.


Amenities (4):  This is the other category where they succeeded fairly well.  The Hilton Garden Inn has two swimming pools, one indoor and one outdoor, and a jacuzzi tub on the 7th floor, all of which are heated.  The outdoor pool also has a pretty great view of the Centennial Park area and Atlanta skyline.  There is also a fitness center on the 7th floor, which again, is helped by the fact that everything in there is new.  Hopefully, all of these facilities will be kept up over the years.  There is also a nice restaurant right off of the lobby and again, the location of the hotel itself gives you great access to the attractions in the area.



Service (1):  Nice staff, but there always seemed to be a slow moving line at the reception desk and they gave away the last king room to the guy in front of me who came in without a reservation.  Didn't get the warm, fuzzy feeling that you get when you are somewhere special.  Parking was also available in an attached parking deck, but you often had to park on the 8th or 9th floor when there was something else going on in the area.

So there it is, the first Hotel Hopper review!  Again, I would highly recommend the Hilton Garden Inn for someone looking for a nice, practical place to stay, but if I had to do it again, maybe I would have sprung a little more for the W Hotel a few blocks away.  The Garden Inn didn't quite cut in this more competitive arena.

.sb06

Saturday, April 3, 2010

A Tour of Washington's Best

Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been a while, life has been hectic!  But anyway, I have a great experience to share with you so hopefully the wait has been worth it.  Last Sunday, my fiance and I attended the first annual Engaged! in Washington event.  This event featured tours of 5 of the best grand luxury hotels in D.C. as they were set up for an actual wedding.  The 5 hotels we visited were the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, Willard Intercontinental, Hay Adams, and St. Regis, all of which are located in the downtown D.C. area.  It was AWESOME!!!  Here's the scoop on each the hotels:

The Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton, by far, had the best set-up and experience.  We started here, and it was a great start to the evening.  We were welcomed by the staff, picked up our registration materials and free gift bags and made our way down the candle lined stairs as a group of violinists played.  At the bottom of the stairs, a group of models were showing off their wedding gowns.  We proceeded through an arched walkway, talked to some vendors, and entered the large banquet hall where the action really was.  The hall was separated by curtains to segment the different phases of a wedding.  First, the ceremony area featured a modern set-up, with benches for seating as opposed to chairs.



The next section was the reception area, which featured food stations, dessert tables, an open bar, and more vendors.  There was also splits of Moet champagne everywhere, to which the bartender thankfully suggested adding Grand Marnier.  For those new to the idea of champagne cocktails, be sure to check it out the next time you have the chance.  They also had some delicious white chocolate covered brownies..mm mm!  Anyway, the final area featured a set of banquet tables, each of which was decorated in a different style and color theme and we were asked to vote on which one we liked best.  Overall, it was an incredible display and again, we salute the Ritz-Carlton for doing big things!



Four Seasons

The Four Seasons, located in Georgetown, probably had one of the lesser impressive displays, but it was still very nice and the hotel lobby and restaurant looked great on the way down to the event space.  There were three rooms on display.  The first was a basic, traditional banquet style room with round tables.  The middle room was a nicely designed reception/lounge area where we got to enjoy some great food.  There was a Korean BBQ inspired soft taco station, another open bar featuring Moet-Hennessy sponsored liquors and champagne cocktails, another station featuring scallops and beef tenderloin, and a lady inside some kind of awkward, moving table that was serving coconut ice cream and brownies.  Finally, there was the main reception room that again featured four table designs and the best band we heard all night.  So overall, pretty good, but not in the same league as the Ritz-Carlton.


  Willard Intercontinental

The Willard Intercontinental had most of the action down the main hallway leading from the hotel lobby, which is where many of the vendors and reception items were located.



No amazing treats to report here, but we did miss out on the cider champagne cocktail.  There were two decorated rooms.  The first was an extremely elaborate ceremonial room that featured a harpist.



The other room was the reception room, which featured a band on stage on each side that alternated playing sets of songs, which was a pretty interesting idea.  There was also a large bar in the room and tables around the room decorated in different styles and colors.





Overall, we had a nice time at the Intercontinental and they did a great job with the rooms.

Hay Adams

The Hay Adams is a grand hotel that speaks historical Washington D.C. culture.  This hotel was lacking in the display performance compared to the other hotels, only featuring an area of the lobby with vendors and a champagne bar and a single reception room on the main floor, but honestly it didn't matter.  There is a terrace on the 8th floor that is available for hosting events and it happens to have what is probably the most amazing view in the city.  The view overlooks the rear of the White House and Lafayette Park, and is also high enough to see the Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, and over into Virginia.  We were fortunate enough to have our picture taken by a photographer with the background you see in the picture below.  We were really lucky to see this space and the view because it's not somewhere you can visit casually.  You must attend as part of a planned event for security purposes.



St. Regis

Our last stop was the St. Regis, which is a block down from the Hay Adams.  Of course, we found this out after we got on the shuttle and rode in a circle just to end up almost where we started.  The St. Regis is another historical Washington-styled hotel, but it combines a nice mix of modern design.  After seeing 4 hotels, we weren't expecting to see much else, but we were pleasantly surprised.  The lobby featured a very nice, modern design that complimented the older features in the hotel.  We went through an area that featured banquet-style tables and then moved into the reception area, which was really nice.  Our camera battery died at this point, so unfortunately you have to enjoy fuzzy pictures from my Blackberry.


Overall, the St. Regis did a really good job, especially with the reception room and it was a nice end to the night.  We actually headed back to the Ritz-Carlton to enjoy the rest of the night there since we had so much fun.  This was a great event and for anyone who has the opportunity to attend this or anything like, don't miss out on a chance to see some really great luxury hotels!  I guess I should give a recommendation on which I would stay at first.  Based on the feeling I got from the lobby, event spaces, and website, I think my personal style would lead me to......the Four Seasons!

More to come soon so check back!

.sb06