Honestly, I’m a pretty flexible traveler, but I still have my dreams. The following are the things that I look for most when choosing a hotel. Again, they’re not mandatory criteria, just priorities.
- Free wireless Internet that ALSO works with Macs: I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve checked into a hotel with „free wireless Internet“ and when I try to get on the web with my lovely little Macbook, it’s a no-go. I need my email all the time, as well as my free NYTimes. Love that David Brooks. If there’s no free wifi, the hotel had better at least have a business center. And God forbid they try to charge me for that.
- Location, location, location: I’m not one to want to stay in the middle of tourist lala land. I don’t consider overpriced restaurants a must. All the same, some parts of town, you just don’t want to end up in, especially as a younger, somewhat vertically-challenged woman.
- Fitness Center: Even if I don’t use it, a fitness center in my hotel makes me feel a little less guilty about that extra round of Kaiserschmarn: “I’ll work it off in my fitness center!” Right. Important though: gotta have the sweat-wipey cloths. Nothing worse than a drippy Treadmill to kill your fitness motivation.
- Clean Swimming Pool: I’d honestly rather have no pool than the green monsters I’ve experienced in some hotels (see Hotels in LA).
- Cheerios at Breakfast: I have to admit, it doesn’t matter how bad they are, I always get really excited about the complementary breakfasts. I’m a breakfast person. Muffins, bagels, pancakes….I could it breakfast 3 meals a day every day (see: Fitness Center)
- Clean: I used to work as a room cleaner in a hotel in Concord, NH to help pay for college. Some guests are just dirty. (Note: Tip your room cleaners well. It’s a brutal line of work).
- Open Minibars: Not that I ever take anything from the minibar, but sometimes I like to put in my own food or bottled water. It’s also obnoxious when the minibar is locked and you can’t find the key. Case in point: around 2am last March, my boyfriend got food poisoning in our five-star Mexican hotel (“Don’t drink the water,” I told him). Anyway, the minibar was locked with the key nowhere to be found. Obviously the boy needed to drink, so I spent the rest of the night sterilizing water using the in-room coffee pot. Never again.
Hope that helps any of you out there trying to figure out what to look out for in your next hotel. For the rest of you, I hope it was at least mildly interesting, entertaining or maybe even both.
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