Monday, May 10, 2010

Pet Peeves in great hotels

Travels had a function just outside of beautiful Boston. Because we had a bunch of Starwoods points, we stayed at the Westin - Waltham. It is just outside of Boston. It is a very nice hotel.
However, The Westin hit a couple of Travels’ hot buttons for things hotels should not do.
The in-room lighting. We were upgraded to a mini-suite, again thanks to those wonderful Starwoods points!. The room was lovely. A wonderful bedroom with a very nice sitting room near the door. Each had it’s own flatscreen TV. Sweet, since Mrs Travels tends to watch late night TV while I get my beauty sleep. (If only it worked!)
But the lights provided made it very hard to read. In the day time, the sitting room area - with all the lights on - was still dark. Saving power expense is important to any hotel, but come on! Put a large enough bulb in the lamp so that we can, at least, read a newspaper. Travels turned on every lamp available and still needed more light to read. 
Internet. It was not included. The fee was something like $11 for dial-up access and $14 for broadband per day. Travels has only one question about this: why do lesser properties include internet for free while the “better” properties (hotels) charge these awful rates? Lord knows, what I pay per month at home is nowhere close to these fees.
Travels just returned from Mainz, Germany where we stayed at the Hyatt. Again, a wonderful hotel...but internet was charged at 50 cents per minute (Euro cents) up to a maximum of Euro 18 per day! (note that E18 is about $24 PER DAY!)
And do not get us started about phone rates when one calls from the room!
*sigh* such is the lot of the traveler these days. I suggest that you speak up at the front desk. Who knows? Every once in a while, you can beat these fees.