Sweet Tech And Sour Smells

I’m back from a quick weekend jaunt to New York City, and while my trip was strictly pleasure, it’s hard to ever be completely "on vacation" when you’re a hotel writer staying in a hotel.

First off, my girlfriend and I slinked into the lobby at Sheraton New York and sat down at the Surface unit. Surface is as cool in person as it sounds in the press releases. 

However, at least in this particular hotel, I fear this awesome technology will be under-used mainly because it seems to be underpromoted. That’s an ironic statement, considering the Starwood folks were just up the road showing off Surface in Central Park (unbeknownst to me) while I was there. 

But the fact is, when we sat down to play with Surface, the other people sitting there seemed to be oblivious to its existence; it doesn’t help that the unit’s screensaver is a virtual aquarium and that you have to touch a tiny nondescript button to get the thing up and running. There wasn’t even any signage there (that we could see, anyway) that referenced Surface. But once we got to playing with the thing, we quickly had plenty of curious bystanders leaning over our shoulders.

Attention, Sheraton and/or Microsoft: This Surface thing is really cool. Don’t hide it!

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On an unrelated note, I promised (via Twitter) my friends at HotelChatter a full report on my stay at Hotel Wellington. HotelChatter called me "brave" for taking a chance on this Central Park South mainstay; Wellington wasn’t that bad, especially considering our cheap-for-NYC-rate, but, well, there were a few issues.

Issue 1: Our room smelled like Vicks VapoRub upon check-in. I can only assume (and hope) it was from the cleaning supplies. If that’s the case, though, I would suggest the hotel invest in some Febreze. After leaving the window open a day, the VapoRub scent transitioned to a light baby powder odor, which was a welcome improvement.

Issue 2: Housekeeping piled up trash bags in the hallway and left them for days. Not much to say about that. But, then again, the entire city of New York does that with the sidewalks, so …

Issue 3: Housekeeping ignored the Do Not Disturb sign. Granted, we left the DND on the door the entire time we were there, since we had valuables in the room and since we didn’t particularly care if the sheets got changed. But lo and behold, we come back one evening to find the DND sign gone and the room made up. I know the hotel has an interest in making sure we’re not hiding any dead bodies or meth labs, but someone really ought to let you know first. It’s called courtesy. Otherwise, why even have the stupid DND sign?

Issue 4: The bellman was just a tad overzealous. When we first arrived at the hotel, after paying the cabbie, we got out, looked in the open trunk and stared at emptiness. All our bags were gone, and nowhere to be found. After a few moments of panic, the bellman standing 15 feet away smiled and motioned inside, where he had already taken our bags. Even then, we had to look around the lobby for 20 seconds before spotting them. Hoteliers, a piece of advice: See to it that the first emotion your guests feel upon arriving at your hotel is not sheer horror.

Issue 5: Not only is Wi-Fi US$9.99 for 24 hours, but I actually had to call the front desk for an access code. Seriously, Wellington, get with the program here. (Normally, I would have rejected this on principal, particularly on vacation, but my fantasy baseball team was in the playoffs and I really really needed to get online!)

So, that’s a lot of complaining, I realize, but overall, the Wellington was OK. Clean, safe, all that. Certainly undeserving of its, er, "reputation."