Category: Hotels

Travel Hotels Humor

Posted on

Man claims he extends arms, turns in circle, without touching walls of New York City hotel room

A British tourist visiting New York City has made the extraordinary claim that he was able to stand in the middle of his hotel room and turn in a complete circle without touching a single wall.

“I had to send my wife and son out into the hallway, and stand on the bed, but, yeah, I did it,” said a beaming Bob Payne, of Hamstarly, England, who said he and his family were in New York to watch the Chinese shop at Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s.

Payne said he’d tried a similar feat during his last visit to New York, in 2004, but it had resulted in him breaking his arm, “not to mention giving the porter who was delivering our bags to the room a black eye.”

A spokesman for New York City’s tourism bureau said that while rare, instances of hotel guests being able to stretch out their arms without touching a wall had been known to happen before.

“We even had a case reported at the Mansfield Hotel, in Midtown, but the girl making the claim turned out to have abnormally short arms,” the spokesman said.

When travel humor writer Bob Payne is not serving as editor-in-chief of BobCarriesOn.com, the website that has been providing accurate travel news and advice since before Columbus landed at Plymouth Rock, he works part time as a bellman at the Mainsfield Hotel.

BigStock photo.  

Posted on

In aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Manhattan plans six new waterfront hotels

The Hurricane Sandy storm surge washing through the streets of Lower Manhattan this week has accelerated plans for the construction of at least a half dozen waterfront hotels in New York City at locations that have historically been dry land, according to the development group Big Apple Beach Resorts.

“Obviously, we’d been thinking about the possibilities presented by rising waters, as so many developers have,” said Big Apple Beach Resorts spokesman Bob Payne. “But none of our New York waterfront hotels were scheduled to begin construction until at least 2025, the projected date for Fox News to begin warning people about Global Warming.”

What’s changed, Payne told a reporter for BobCarriesOn.com, is the attitude of New York’s city officials, some of whom waded through waist-deep water to bring messages of encouragement to Big Apple Beach Resorts’ Wall Street offices.

“When it comes to the give and take of the permitting process I think we’ll have an unprecedented level of city support, especially among those officials who we let use our power outlets to re-charge their mobile devices during the storm,” Payne said.

According to Payne, the first of the Big Apple Beach Resorts will include:

Beaches Wall Street

This will be a resort geared for families, especially those from Brazil, Russian, China, and India, who will want to tie up their yachts to the statues of some of America’s financial giants soon to be standing knee-deep in the sand. Among Beaches Wall Street’s many family-oriented attractions will be one of the largest outdoor waterslides in Lower Manhattan, and for an additional charge, deep sea fishing from every balcony.

The Palm & Pawn Villas of Lower Manhattan

Meant to harmonize closely with its surroundings, the Palm & Pawn will offer, often for the price of a watch you don’t really need anymore, a sense of the Manhattan lost. It will have the area’s only 18-hole golf course, with each hole stunningly located on the top of one of the city’s highest remaining buildings. Scuba divers will especially like this hotel, which, although on the side of Manhattan most exposed to the direct force of the Atlantic Ocean, will be protected by a reef composed of the world’s largest collection of discarded truck tires. For truly adventurous, the hotel’s concierge will be able to arrange a scuba tour of former subway tunnels.

Sandy’s  South Street Sunny Sands

The otherwise delightful beach originally carved out by Hurricane Sandy  in front of the Sunny Sands might often be strewn with more debris, including crumpled lottery tickets, dog excrement, and formerly high-ranking members of organized crime, than most visitors would prefer. But cheap labor resulting from the no doubt continuing downward spiral of the national economy will make it possible for the hotel to employ a full-time clean-up staff who will maintain the beach from dawn until it is no longer safe to be out in the evening.

Seaside Inn at the New York Stock Exchange

For hundreds of years, when it was known as the Mountaintop Inn, this AAA-rated property was the gathering place for Manhattan’s financial upper crust.  Then, there was a long decline, when it was overrun by day traders. Now, though, it will be returned to its former glory. Among other guests you’ll find English so common that you’ll forget you are in post-deluvian New York. And barefoot staff will wear smiles that disguise the fact they’d rather be wearing shoes, if they could afford them.

Financial District Waterfront Resort and Spa

Its prime location in the landing pattern of Newark Liberty Airport will make this ultra-ritzy accommodation popular with jet setters. A special feature will be stunning views of that part of the Statue of Liberty still above water. Hotel beach services will include towels, umbrellas, and, when the police are otherwise occupied, massages.

Battery Park Overwater Bungalows

Offering some of the first thatch-roof overwater accommodations in the New York metropolitan area, this 17-room enclave of serenity will overlook the shallow waters of Battery Park, which are ideal for swimming, windsurfing, and snorkeling among the remnants of abandoned cars. Reachable only by small boat, it will feature gambling in the form of whether you’ll be able to flag down a water taxi. There will be no telephones, but that is expected to be the case with most Lower Manhattan properties, most of the time.

Posted on

Presidential debate makes clear the importance of hotel pillow menus

After watching the presidential debates, about the only thing most observers could agree on was that the candidates needed a good night’s sleep. To help with that, one hotel, New York City’s The Benjamin, has added a set of presidential selections to their pillow menu. Chosen by the Benjamin’s  Sleep Concierge, they are designed specifically for the Democratic and Republican hopefuls, but will also be available to hotel guests through election night, although the hotel has added a disclaimer that they will not be responsible for any politically inspired pillow fights.

Barack Obama’s selection, the environmentally friendly Pillo1 (TM) , is designed for optimal alignment no matter where stress might be coming from, while Mitt Romney’s, The Boomerang, is constructed to provide maximum support of any position and protection against any remarks he makes that might come back to cause him trouble.

While BobCarriesOn.com fully endorses any effort that has the potential to cause some ruckus in a hotel bed chamber, we feel The Benjamin has not gone far enough. There should be a selection of pillows that commemorate not only the current candidates but some of our most notable past presidents, as well. A few of those presidents, and their pillows, might include:

George Washington — The Executive Traveler — Designed in honor of a president known for sleeping just about everywhere, this compact model can be easily concealed beneath a greatcoat when checking out, then produced again when a quick nap is in order during chilly night-time crossings of the Delaware.

Abraham Lincoln — Honestly, Abe — He was the great Emancipator, and a wit to boot, but to truly reflect this president you’d want a pillow made of sturdy, inexpensive materials capable of standing up well to hotel guests who act like they were brought up in a log cabin.

Herbert Hoover — One Hundred Percent, All Natural, Feather Filled — As the president who famously promised “a chicken in every pot,” it is only right that Hoover be remembered with a pillow that could have made good use of all the chicken feathers his policy produced.

Franklin Roosevelt — No Pest Pillow — A fearless leader whose ringing words helped get the nation through difficult times, FDR would be happy to know the specially-treated pillow named for him means that no hotelier should ever have to say, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And bed bugs.”

Bill Clinton — Tagged for Evidence — Ideal for recalling a president who never quite understood that when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed “Four Score” he wasn’t bragging about the number of illicit relationships he’d had in the Oval Office.

Posted on

Take my towel. Please. The rules for going home with hotel amenities

Among the drawbacks of  carrying on your bags when you fly is that you can’t fill them with nearly as many hotel amenities as you once could. Remember when luggage was so volumnious you could walk unnoticed out of a hotel with a TV, and perhaps even a light fixture or two?

Complicating the problem is that many hotels now expect you to take certain items, items that for promotional purposes usually have the hotel logo branded on them. But since there is no uniform set of rules, it is difficult to know what branded amenities you can tuck away without being labeled a kleptomaniac or, even worse, abtuctor of mini bars.

The W Hotels in particular leave me feeling uncertain about what is expected, as I am reminded at the W Barcelona, where I could just about fill up a steamer trunk with items banded with the upscale chain’s single-letter logo — and another steamer trunk filled with items that are not.

The W notepads, post cards, book marks, key cards, Do Not Disturb signs, and napkins that came with my welcome drink are clearly mine if I want them. And surely the laundry bag and the slippers, both of flimsy, throw-away material, are meant for me to keep, and would fit nicely in a carry-on bag. But the clothes-hangers, robes, towels, telephone, iPod dock, and giant letter W fixed to the hotel’s facade, probably not.

So how do you judge if removing a hotel amenity would be theft?

It is not branded.

At the W Barcelona, that means I have to leave the throw pillows, bedspreads, curtains, flat-screen TV, desk, and sofa, all of which wouldn’t fit in my carry-on anyway. (Oddly, the bathroom items do not carry the W logo, which is a disappointment to an amenities collector who has not purchased soap or shampoo since about 1983.

It has a  card attached stating how much it costs.

At the W Barcelona, for instance, a bottle of Bacardi rum, accompanied by the mixers necessary for making a mojito martini, costs $22 Euros.

You would need a screwdriver to remove it.

That eliminates most art work, the wall mirrors, the shower head, and the bathroom vanity.

A charge for it appears on your credit card.

This has never happened to me, at a W.

 

 

Posted on

Happy Hands Index ™ makes writing hotel reviews a breeze

Watching couples walking hand in hand through the open-air lobby of the all-inclusiuve Riu Bachata in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, reinforces my belief in how easy writing hotel reviews can be.

Of course not all travel writers will agree with me. And there was a time, I reflect, as I sip on the pina colada I brought over from the bar (not the bar by the pool, but one of the others), when I didn’t feel that way either.

Traditionally, the problem with writing reviews — other than that after about 500 of them you begin to live in fear that your embarrassing depth of knowledge about things like the thread count of hotel sheets will emerge unbidden in the course of an otherwise normal conversation — is that they are so subjective, and so dependent upon conditions often unique to your individual stay (it is unlikely that someone else will find a live goat in their bathtub), that it is impossible to voice a critique a would-be guest can absolutely count on to reflect their own experience.

What are the areas of subjectivity hotel reviews are based upon? There are setting, facilities, and dining, all of which normally require a reviewer to see how those things might be related, however distantly, to photographs shown of them on the hotel website. There is service, usually measured by making an outrageous request, such as asking that a cheese platter be brought up to your room, by someone dressed as a Disney character, when you are not staying at a Disney hotel. And there is price, guests’ perceptions of it likely to vary significantly, depending on whether they can book a luxury oceanfront suite without much thought or expect things to be just so because they are, after all, paying $57 per person per night.

Bringing all these factors together in a meaningful way can be so demanding that many professional hotel reviewers routinely rely on a network of resources they hope will allow them to balance their personal observations with points of view other than their own. That is to say they crib from Tripadvisor.

I myself don’t rely on Tripadvisor reviews, largely because too many of them, particularly for hotels in the tropics, start with a complaint about cockroaches,  a criticism that, having spent some of my more formative years in South Florida, predisposes me to look with disdain on anything else the reviewer might have to say.

What I now rely on instead, especially at a resort like the Riu Bachata, whose guests tend to be couples, often on their honeymoon or actually having their wedding at the resort, is how many of them are holding hands.

Unless it’s a parent dragging a five-year-old to a time-out location, people hold hands when they are happy. And resort guests are happy when, for them, the hotel has gotten the balance of setting, facilities, dining, service, and price just right.

So all I have to do is observe what percent of guests are holding hands, and assign the total a number on my recently created Happy Hands Index ™. I give the Riu Bachata, for instance, a 7 out of 10. It’s not the fanciest resort in the Caribbean, or even in Puerto Plata, but people generally seem to be having a good time. In fact, I would rank it even higher, except there appears to be some kind of police activity going on and I notice that one of the couples is not actually holding hands but is cuffed together at the wrists.

The Dominican Republic is one of those countries (the U.S. being another) where you don’t want to get too curious about police activity, so, work-day concluded, I am headed back to the beach, where I should be in plenty of time to finish watching two competing sets of wedding parties play volleyball.

(Doubles from $57 per person, all inclusive, not including local taxes, airport transport, spa services, casino losses, or consequences arising from discovery of concurrent visits by former spouses. Happy Hands Index: 7; www.riu.com )

Simple Share Buttons