The Suite Life

Boston.com’s travel section just posted a piece highlighting the city’s top hotel bars, complete with recipes for their signature cocktails.

Speciality drinks at these top watering holes include:

• Bar 10, The Westin Copley Place:
  Platinum Martini (citron vodka, cointreau, lime, white cranberry)
• The Bristol Lounge, Four Seasons Boston:
  Raspberry Blossom (vodka, framboise)
• Eastern Standard, The Hotel Commonwealth:
  Au Provence (vodka, tarragon, fresh lime)
• Foundation Lounge, The Hotel Commonwealth:
  Fenway 04 (gin, lemon, sugar, champagne)
• Great Bay, The Hotel Commonwealth:
  The Ghost of Mary (Bloody Mary with lemon vodka)
• Jer-Ne, The Ritz Carlton Boston Common:
  Pop Rocks cocktail (lemon vodka, chambord, pop-rocks rim!)
• Oak Bar, Fairmont Copley Plaza:
  Lui-Tini (raspberry vodka, white creme de cacao)
• Spire, Nine-Zero Hotel:
  Grape Martini

You can visit the site to print a PDF of all of the recipes, write about your own favorite hotel bar, or add your own review.

And when the urge to sample strikes, head to Perfect Escapes to book a room at any of these six luxurious Boston hotels.

Whether you prefer to putt or be pampered, Perfect Escapes has teamed up with the luxurious Diplomat Country Club to offer all the things you love to do in Miami: Hit the links at South Florida’s only five-star championship golf course, or relax your cares away at The Spa at the Diplomat.

The South Florida Spa Escape includes:

• Overnight accommodations in a spacious, elegant guestroom
• Your choice of one 50-minute treatment — a Diplomat Massage or a Diplomat Facial at the Spa at The Diplomat — per guest, per night

The Florida Fairways package includes:

• Overnight accommodations in a spacious, elegant guestroom
• Two rounds of golf on the resort’s championship course

Just as with our previous deals, these special amenities are available nightly: You’ll receive additional spa treatments or rounds of golf for each night of your stay.

I have never had the opportunity to meet David Neeleman, but I like the guy. Here is a copy of the following mass-email apology note from JetBlue related to the cancellations and delays from the President’s Day weekend storms:

Dear JetBlue Customers,

We are sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, we are deeply sorry.

Last week was the worst operational week in JetBlue’s seven year history. Following the severe winter ice storm in the Northeast, we subjected our customers to unacceptable delays, flight cancellations, lost baggage, and other major inconveniences. The storm disrupted the movement of aircraft, and, more importantly, disrupted the movement of JetBlue’s pilot and inflight crewmembers who were depending on those planes to get them to the airports where they were scheduled to serve you. With the busy President’s Day weekend upon us, rebooking opportunities were scarce and hold times at 1-800-JETBLUE were unacceptably long or not even available, further hindering our recovery efforts.

Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that we caused. This is especially saddening because JetBlue was founded on the promise of bringing humanity back to air travel and making the experience of flying happier and easier for everyone who chooses to fly with us. We know we failed to deliver on this promise last week.

We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us. We have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for our crewmembers and improved procedures for handling operational difficulties in the future. We are confident, as a result of these actions, that JetBlue will emerge as a more reliable and even more customer responsive airline than ever before.

Most importantly, we have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of Rights—our official commitment to you of how we will handle operational interruptions going forward—including details of compensation. I have a video message to share with you about this industry leading action.You deserved better—a lot better—from us last week. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and all of us here hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you onboard again soon and provide you the positive JetBlue Experience you have come to expect from us.

Sincerely,
David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways

I know the delays and cancellations have been a public relations disaster for JetBlue and that this type of apology should be expected, but it rings true to me for a few reasons.

• First, I believe David Neelman actually cares about the aggravation JetBlue caused its passengers recently.

• Second, David addressed the issue in a timely and direct manner.

• Third, the apology isn’t merely some hollow blather. The JetBlue Customer Bill of Rights actually has some teeth in it.

JetBlue is being proactive in saying that delays and inconveniences that they should have been able control — “Controllable Irregularity” is their unfortunate term — will result in JetBlue giving customers travel vouchers in an amount relative to the magnitude of the inconvenience (in hours) and the amount of money the passenger paid to them. I particularly love how much it’ll irk the other carriers that JetBlue unilaterally implemented this type of policy that they are fighting.

I switched the bulk of my air travel to one-class carriers such as JetBlue, Southwest and Eos Airlines (a reminder that “one class” does not have to mean “economy”) over recent years, as I find these airlines do a better job of servicing their clients than the traditional multi-class carriers.

My hat’s off to you David. Thanks for not forgetting about what you wanted to improve despite a lot of early success.

According to press accounts, Congress’s decision to move the beginning of Daylight Savings Time back to March 11 this year may throw a wrench into the works of many computer systems — including those used by airlines, hotels, rental-car agencies and other travel providers.

Both Apple and Microsoft claim that users running current versions of Windows XP, Vista and OSX will remain unaffected. But, according to ZDNet: “Windows 2000 and Windows XP prior to Service Pack 2 are no longer supported, for example. The same goes for older versions of Exchange and Windows Server.” And most large businesses run custom applications and specialized server operating systems; how many of these enterprise software installations may be affected is completely unknown.

So, what can you do keep your travel plans on schedule if you must travel on (or soon after) March 11? Be prepared for any of the following:

• Late wakeup calls
• Incorrectly recorded car-rental pickup and return times
• Late-departing planes and trains
• Personal gadgets — PDAs, computers, phones, etc. — failing to automatically update to Daylight time
• Off-peak cellular phone calls misbilled as peak

As G.I. Joe says: Knowing is half the battle. (And padding your schedule a bit the week of March 11 to 16 couldn’t hurt, either.)

Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 7, 2007

San Francisco’s Argent Hotel will change its name, spend $29 million on a top-to-bottom renovation and premiere April 12 as the Westin San Francisco Market Street, the hotel’s general manager said Tuesday.

The hotel, which will stay open as the Argent during the extensive makeover, plans to redo every guest room, install 37-inch flat-screen TVs in every room, replace the Argent’s gold-and-mustard color scheme with soothing grays, redesign every public space, and christen a Northern Italian restaurant and a cafe on the pedestrian walkway that will link Third and Fourth streets, according to general manager Michael Casey.

Located at 50 Third St., between Market and Mission streets, the 36-story, 676-room hotel has struggled to carve out an identity and compete as an independent hotel in a business dominated by chains. It opened in 1987 as Le Meridien, was operated for years by All Nippon Airways as an ANA Hotel and became the Argent in the late 1990s.

The hotel was purchased in 2005 by Highgate Holdings and Whitehall Street Global Real Estate Partnership, which decided that operating the property independently is a competitive disadvantage in an age of giant hotel chains that offer guest loyalty programs.

The Argent’s owners decided to make the hotel a Westin, a brand controlled by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. of White Plains, N.Y., and try to attract business travelers attending conventions at Moscone Center or meetings in the hotel, which is expanding its meeting space, Casey said.

Go here to read the full article: $29 million makeover for Argent / The hotel will be renamed Westin and raise its rates

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