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Sad Sea Lion Has Nowhere to Sleep in Punta Del Este and Other Stories This Week

HotelChatter | 6 hours 11 minutes ago

It's our weekly recap which we call Suite-Hostel. Get it?SUITE:$19.04 for a Night at The RooseveltFive Hotels Where You Can Sleep and SkateWhich Rooftop Pool is Best for You in Seville?ALSO:Top Five Hotels for Eating MacaronsHOSTEL:Punta del Este Hotels are Sold-Out for New Year's.Marriott Changing Up The Ritz-Carlton BrandDelano a No-Go for

Is This The Real Reason Why Hotels Have Bad WiFi Connections?

HotelChatter | 6 hours 23 minutes ago

Porn jammers! Old men in the club! Fergie! Hotel Strikes!It always seems that no matter how much Celebrity Scoop we write about in a given week, there's also lots more that we didn't have time to get to. So from now on, every Friday we'll be rounding up the week's Infamous Hotels. This weekly list will include hotels that celebrities visited (and it made the news) but also hotels that really up the "Eww" factor. This can easily done by manipulating the WiFi connection for guests.The Sports Gu...

Cape Town: This Week in Hotel Lust: White Picket Fences at Cape Town's Mount Nelson

HotelChatter | 6 hours 56 minutes ago

This week, a combination of wanderlust and hotel lust led us to research the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa, which a roving HotelChatter correspondent briefly had the chance to visit last year. We deemed Mount Nelson worth a second look from afar, because of the consistent buzz it garners for its exaggerated sense of luxury. Then again, if it weren't exaggerated it wouldn't be lust-worthy, would it? Fat cats who travel to areas of the world deemed "exotic" aren't usually in the...

These Dog Concierges Have Written a Book, Have You?

HotelChatter | 8 hours 21 minutes ago

It’s that time of the week again: Cute Hotel Doggie Friday! And today we give you not one but two adorable hotel doggies. Because we’re nice like that. Both of these smilin’ fools work for Fairmont Hotels—Catie Copley (the black lab) at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, and Santol (a Bernese mountain dog cross) at the Fairmont Le Ch teau Frontenac in Quebec City. They have the lofty title of Canine Ambassador, and enjoy all the perks that go with it—business cards,...

Shanghai: Please Welcome A Peninsula And Its Fleet Of Phantoms To Shanghai

HotelChatter | 8 hours 21 minutes ago

We can talk about Art Basel Miami hotels and hotels for the holidays all we want, but we can't ignore one of the biggest hotel openings of autumn, that of the Peninsula Shanghai. It officially welcomes its first guests back on October 19, and yet it's already a like a landmark on Shanghai's Bund—the street of shops, other high-class hotels, and historical buildings right at the bend of the Huangpu River. The main thing to know about this Peninsula is its relatively low starting room rate...

Los Angeles: The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel Gets Jazzed About Brunch

HotelChatter | 8 hours 34 minutes ago

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel has a long and checkered history that well pre-dates today’s celebrity tantrums and “Super Sweet 16” parties. As a way of hearkening back to that golden-hued heyday, the hotel has started offering a new ”Jazz Brunch” on Sundays from 11:00am-3:00pm. Since the special brunch starts at $18 per person, it’s actually a pretty good deal, especially for a Thompson Hotel, and especially considering that overnight parking will run you around...

Santiago: Party Dispatch Report: The W Santiago's Grand Opening Party

HotelChatter | 9 hours 26 minutes ago

For the opening of the W Santiago Chile we were fortunate to have Jonathan Franklin and photographer Morten Andersen, the guys behind Addict Village attend the party and report back to us on what they saw. We know, we know, what a tough assignment. Enjoy. W chose Santiago as its first ever South American location roughly five years ago. Finally on Tuesday, The W Hotel Santiago held its official opening party, a trademark WOW experience that included a rooftop pool adorned with three female sy...

Berlin: The Hotel Concorde Berlin Wants You To Look Hawt

HotelChatter | 9 hours 39 minutes ago

Berlin's Hotel Concorde has long tried to be hip with its accommodation packages, and each deal they come out with does seem to get better and better. Learning French in Berlin was a bit of a stretch; their Fall of the Wall deal was pretty good; but now comes the most sensible idea they've had so far: a Shop in the City package.Being all very cosmopolitan and cool, yet not outrageously expensive, Berlin is an ideal place to go on a shopping splurge. The Hotel Concorde is also in the right par...

Borrego Springs: Desert Chic for Cheap(er) at Borrego Ranch Resort & Spa

HotelChatter | 10 hours 10 minutes ago

Okay. There are officially 31 days until Winter Solstice (a.k.a. the shortest day of the year) and we’re already going a little stir-crazy with the decrease in daylight and the plunging temperatures. The solution? Head to warmer locales, like Borrego Springs in the Southern California desert. Sure, springtime may steal this remote desert destination’s tourist thunder with its insanely beautiful display of wildflowers at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, but wintertime temps that hov...

Washington: Washington Marriott at Metro Center Gets Spiffed Up

HotelChatter | 11 hours 36 minutes ago

In recent years, Washington DC's downtown has transformed into a destination you might actually want to hang out. Or at the very least, those safe-clean-friendly claims being made about it a few years ago are now much closer to being true! Think haute restaurants, quality theatre and galleries, and much, much more foot traffic. (There's even a trendier name for the 'hood: Penn Quarter.)For Marriott's part, they've responded to the neighborhood's spiffier image with an $11 million renovation a...

Seville: The Best Rooftop Bar in Seville Is At The EME Hotel

HotelChatter | 12 hours 7 minutes ago

As we said yesterday, rooftop pools and bars are all the rage in Seville at the moment. But nice as the others can be, there’s one place that stands head and shoulders (or maybe that should be a couple of floors) above the others – the Santo Terraza Bar at the EME Hotel on Calle Alemanes. For a start, the position is unbeatable – it’s in the cathedral square, facing the Giralda and the north side of the cathedral, with all its balustrades and flying buttresses and other ar...

New York: Rooms at The Distrikt Not As Funky as the Hotel's Name Suggests

HotelChatter | 12 hours 55 minutes ago

One of our favorite milestones when tracking a new hotel opening is the release of photos. Not renderings, not collages, but full color pictures of the guestrooms we’re so eager to check into. Today The Distrikt Hotel reaches that milestone by posting photos on its Facebook page.We’ve been dying for a glimpse inside the hotel since the funky collages on the website--while arty and cool--left us without a clue as to room design. Now The Distrikt delivers and we’re both relieved ...

Seattle: Al Gore Keeps It Local at Hotel Vintage Park

HotelChatter | 13 hours 40 minutes ago

If you watched "30 Rock" last night then you may have seen former Vice President Al Gore make a confusing cameo as an eco-concerned janitor for Rockefeller Center (above.) But if you were dining at Tulio Ristorante inside the Hotel Vintage Park in Seattle the other night, then you would have seen Al Gore live, in person. The veep was in town for a town hall meeting to promote his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. He stopped in at Tulio which serves authentic Italian c...

Miami: New Year, New Hotel Gimmick: $20.10 Rate at Miami's Hotel Urbano

HotelChatter | 14 hours 15 minutes ago

Miami's soon-to-be-opened Hotel Urbano is pushing a Grand Opening gimmick that ranks low in creativity but high on the savings-o-meter. Originally slated to open in October, as we reported, its unveiling will now take place in late December, just in time to receive an onslaught of travelers in the new year. The themed deal offers guests who book two or more nights in January 2010 a rate of $20.10 for their first night. That's good enough for those who want to kick off 2010 in a snow-free clim...

Perfect Your Iron Lotus at These Hotels' Ice Rinks

HotelChatter | 14 hours 33 minutes ago

The Pond at Bryant Park.In anticipation of winter, we told you about five hotels where you can sleep and ice skate earlier this week. For those of you who are jonesing for some cold-weather fun, here are other hotels that have rinks nearby so you can lace up and hit the ice. Find out three more skating-hotel picks after the jump.

Boston: Watch Out W: The Ames Hotel Boston Is Now Open

HotelChatter | 15 hours 22 minutes ago

What a long way in such a short time The Ames Hotel in Boston has come. When we checked in on the hotel at the beginning of October, we were quite skeptical based on the construction work we saw going on. But lo and behold, The Ames has gone ahead and opened itself up. Boston.com has the scoop on the hotel execs that made it out last night to the hotel's opening party: The opening party for the Ames drew a long list of VIP guests including the project’s celebrated architect and designer...

How disruptive will the CSeries be?

IAG -- Aviation and Travel | 18 hours 14 minutes ago

Wheels Up: Cuba, Ski Resorts & The Puget Sound

Gridskipper | 23 hours 15 minutes ago

Havana, Cuba [Photo by - Dieghito -/Flickr]·Ski resorts bring on the discounts [USAToday]·A permanent theater festival on the Puget Sound [NYT]·US...

Jetcetera: US Parks, Amsterdam & Airlines

Gridskipper | 23 hours 15 minutes ago

Amsterdam, the Netherlands [Photo by MarcelGermain/Flickr]·How to win a free trip to Amsterdam [Gadling]·Air Canada to test in-flight wifi until Jan. 29...

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