These hotel rooms
Friends, I hope you're ready for a good non-Black Friday and an even better weekend!
Have been compiling this morning's post for a while but only now had the opportunity to complete and post it. As I think I mentioned a while back, I'm again traveling frequently for business, and that means hotels. Lots and lots of hotels! I'm not going to lavishly praise or freely bash any particular brand or chain of hotels. In my experience they all have their pluses and minuses, as one would expect.
The first, and nowadays for me, most important component of a hotel room is a comfortable bed. Not too firm, not too soft. For me this is made worse by the fact that at home I sleep on a TempurPedic bed. Don't see those in hotels too frequently. So the right firmness will determine how soundly I'm able to sleep, but also how many aches and pains will be with me when I wake up.
The number of comfortable beds has been small over the past three months. Usually beds are rock-hard, with no give, and I wake up repeatedly with my arm or hip tingling from a lack of circulation. Doesn't make for a restful night. In a few cases I've encountered those "just right" beds, and thoroughly enjoy them.
The next issue for me is generally the availability and condition of an indoor pool. I find this to be a better alternative to a fitness center workout, for a couple of reasons. Swimming is very good exercise and it's no-impact. Along with that it requires only a bathing suit, which makes packing a lot simpler.
The only catch is that in many cases, the pool is not functioning correctly and is closed for repairs, or worse is in operation but it's not heated sufficiently to allow someone to swim comfortably when it's cold outside. That's almost always the norm, unfortunately.
Then there's breakfast. Ever noticed that the less expensive hotels are the ones that offer a free breakfast? It's not free, of course, but rather it's included in the overall cost of your room. My son, the lawyer-in-training, mentioned to me not long ago that he knows of instances where people have eaten food from hotel buffets and become ill. That's not happened to me, but I try to be somewhat selective about what I eat when offered a buffet for breakfast.
My son and I took two of his kids out of town a couple of weekends ago to a hotel that included breakfast, and they thought that was the greatest thing in the world to have food choices readily available. I found the same buffet to be so-so and in line with what I see otherwise.
And I generally don't have a lot of interaction with the staff at these places, beyond check-in and check-out. I entered a hotel this week and commented about the brand-new Starbucks Coffee shop right next door. He smiled and simply said "I know, right?" Appropriate reaction from his highly caffeinated generation.
Before you ask, I'll just say that, no, I've never considered using a bed-and-breakfast for business travel, but if anyone from the hospitality industry is reading this, contact me. Glad to tell you more!
Have been compiling this morning's post for a while but only now had the opportunity to complete and post it. As I think I mentioned a while back, I'm again traveling frequently for business, and that means hotels. Lots and lots of hotels! I'm not going to lavishly praise or freely bash any particular brand or chain of hotels. In my experience they all have their pluses and minuses, as one would expect.
The first, and nowadays for me, most important component of a hotel room is a comfortable bed. Not too firm, not too soft. For me this is made worse by the fact that at home I sleep on a TempurPedic bed. Don't see those in hotels too frequently. So the right firmness will determine how soundly I'm able to sleep, but also how many aches and pains will be with me when I wake up.
The number of comfortable beds has been small over the past three months. Usually beds are rock-hard, with no give, and I wake up repeatedly with my arm or hip tingling from a lack of circulation. Doesn't make for a restful night. In a few cases I've encountered those "just right" beds, and thoroughly enjoy them.
The next issue for me is generally the availability and condition of an indoor pool. I find this to be a better alternative to a fitness center workout, for a couple of reasons. Swimming is very good exercise and it's no-impact. Along with that it requires only a bathing suit, which makes packing a lot simpler.
The only catch is that in many cases, the pool is not functioning correctly and is closed for repairs, or worse is in operation but it's not heated sufficiently to allow someone to swim comfortably when it's cold outside. That's almost always the norm, unfortunately.
Then there's breakfast. Ever noticed that the less expensive hotels are the ones that offer a free breakfast? It's not free, of course, but rather it's included in the overall cost of your room. My son, the lawyer-in-training, mentioned to me not long ago that he knows of instances where people have eaten food from hotel buffets and become ill. That's not happened to me, but I try to be somewhat selective about what I eat when offered a buffet for breakfast.
My son and I took two of his kids out of town a couple of weekends ago to a hotel that included breakfast, and they thought that was the greatest thing in the world to have food choices readily available. I found the same buffet to be so-so and in line with what I see otherwise.
And I generally don't have a lot of interaction with the staff at these places, beyond check-in and check-out. I entered a hotel this week and commented about the brand-new Starbucks Coffee shop right next door. He smiled and simply said "I know, right?" Appropriate reaction from his highly caffeinated generation.
Before you ask, I'll just say that, no, I've never considered using a bed-and-breakfast for business travel, but if anyone from the hospitality industry is reading this, contact me. Glad to tell you more!
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