The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

“On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night”
~ Hotel California, The Eagles

Considering I knew that I was picking a locally busy time for the hotels for my upcoming vacation in May, it was obvious that the hotel booking had to come first, and considering most hotels allow you to reserve the rooms online and change bookings easily without incurring any charges – and most don’t require deposits in advance, just verified credit card – then it made sense to book in advance and then rearrange bookings when flights were confirmed.

The first hurdle to overcome is the issue of hotel location. I’m staying in a fairly sizeable city – in fact, by British standards it’s probably ‘huge’, and by standards of a Brit who lives in southwest England it’s ‘freaking gigantic’ – so I had the choice of city centre (or ‘downtown’) or on the outskirts.

The outskirts meant that I would have actually been closer to most of the homes of people in the area, but would need to travel a fair bit to see sights and to do the wandering aimlessly in a foreign land, and given that I don’t drive and would therefore be relying on public transport or the kindness of locals, this would have added difficulty. Of course, if people now decide to do everything on the outskirts, I’m fairly screwed.

The price difference wasn’t too much per night, somewhere between $5-20, but it was recommended to me to stay downtown to be near everything and it also meant the hotel would be a handy hub for doing things if needed.

Because I was aiming for a two-week stay, this made hotel booking slightly more complicated. When you are going for a shorter period, you can often get lucky and just miss an influx of people coming and going around your stay, the longer you plan to stay for then the more likely snags will come up. I anticipated that several hotels would be booked over the weekend joining my trip, there is a convention in town and that is in part a reason for my visit – not the whole reason, but it was a good way to justify the trip that little bit more.

My expectation came to fruition, as several of the hotels reported back that they’d be unable to supply a room for one or two of the nights. I was fortunate though, in that I did manage to get a downtown hotel. The Hilton. The Hilton does carry a slightly hefty price tag to it, though one I had been expecting to pay anyway, and with breakfast and wifi connection in my room then for the whole period it works out at – and before you ask, yes it is totally worth it – about $2300 (£1645).

Now, that isn’t too bad considering it’s a king-sized bedroom, with wifi and breakfast, neighbouring the convention center, close to the airport for travelling, close to every other standard meeting point, and for eleven nights. The last time I stayed in Exeter it was about £110 a night and they didn’t have any internet connection – or a gym, swimming pool, working television in the room, fridge – although it did have a good breakfast. I’m kind of hoping they have a game room, though I think I should be concentrating more on things like laundry service.

I do have to add that the Hilton telephone staff are, at least half the time, wonderfully sweet and endearing people. The four times I called, internationally to the US, twice I spoke to very friendly staff, one of whom was so amazingly sweet that it pretty much sold the hotel to me on conversation alone (even though it was surprising to her that we don’t have Thanksgiving in England). The staff at the actual Hilton I’ll be staying at have been very friendly in emails and phone calls too.

Oh, and apparently by staying eleven nights I’ll earn enough points for a free night next time I stay in a Hilton.

Tags: holiday, planning, Vacation, vacation planning