Find hotel deals with new booking site Guestmob

by Meg Nesterov on

The Internet has brought us many ways to research and book hotels at prices much lower than the hotels’ published rate. Aggregate sites like Kayak and Orbitz give you the best available rate (BAR) without pre-payment on a specific hotel, while “opaque” sites like Priceline and Hotwire allow you to bid for a room below BAR but the actual property remains hidden until after you book and the purchase is non-refundable. Now a new booking site offers you hotel deals well below BAR while ensuring consumers flexibility and a standard of quality.

Guestmob differs from other hotel booking sites by combining high-tech algorithmic pricing and expertly curated properties hand-picked for their high user ratings. The site works by grouping hotels into collections of four to eight properties in a given category and neighborhood. You enter your travel dates and can immediately see a room rate of up to 50% below BAR for each hotel collection. The Thursday before you check in, the exact hotel is revealed but you are guaranteed one of the specific hotels in the collection. Best of all, unlike other opaque booking sites, you can cancel your reservation up to three days before check-in.Previously, some savvy travelers have tried to “game the system” with sites like Bidding for Travel, a forum that tries to guess winning bids and participating hotels on opaque sites by sharing successful bookings. Guestmob removes the need for this research by specifying hotels in each collection and immediately offering a deeply discounted price. While room upgrades, frequent guest points and other requests are still at the discretion of the hotel upon check-in, it’s still a great option for travelers with flexibility.

A Guestmob search for a hotel in Chicago on a weekend in mid-May yielded a price of $164 for a 3.5 star hotel on Magnificent Mile (such as a Courtyard or Embassy Suites), or $203 to bump up to a 4 star in the same area such as a W or Westin Hotel. The same properties ranged from $221 to $279 on other sites. Most Guestmob hotels are part of well-known chains such as Marriott or Starwood, or smaller chains like Kimpton and JDV.

Guestmob soft-launched last year in San Francisco and has now expanded to include New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Portland and Phoenix. The site is well connected to social media so you can get help, learn news or give feedback on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can also chat with them right on the site if you have questions.

Marriott developing tallest hotel in NYC

by McLean Robbins on

Marriott’s newest planned hotel will be a new fixture in the New York City skyline for more reasons than one. According to a deal signed last week, the new hotel venture will combine the Courtyard and Residence Inn brands to form a single 752 foot tall hotel, the tallest of its kind (without office or residential space) in New York.

The hotel will also have retail and restaurant space with a main entrance and on 54th Street.

According to an article on Boston.com, the Courtyard hotel will have 378 rooms on floors six through 32, while the Residence Inn will occupy floors 36 through 64. The hotels will share a fitness facility on the 34th floor.

Don’t get too excited, however. The hotel isn’t opening until late 2013.

Courtyard by Marriott opens 2 new properties in Europe

by Scott Carmichael on

The Courtyard by Marriott chain of hotels is in the middle of a major revamp – but at the same time, the chain is working hard to expand across Europe.

The chain already has 40 properties and over 7,000 rooms in Europe, and today, they announced the two newest additions to their lineup – Budapest and St. Petersburg.

The 235-room Courtyard Budapest City Center is located on Blaha Luiza Square in the Pest section of Budapest. The hotel is located in close proximity to both the airport and public transportation lines.

The new 273-room Courtyard St. Petersburg Center West/Pushkin Hotel is located in central St. Petersburg within a 10-minute walk of the Marinsky Theater and St. Nicholas Cathedral and the State Hermitage. It is Marriott’s second Courtyard-branded hotel in St. Petersburg.

Both properties feature everything that makes a Courtyard such a great pick – high speed Internet, the Grab & Go snack market, flat screen TV’s and a well designed work area.

The two new properties are open and ready for guests – to learn more about them, and the 848 other locations in the chain, check out the Courtyard by Marriott site.

Courtyard by Marriott Celebrates its 100th Hotel with an upgraded lobby

by Scott Carmichael on

Last month, Gadling took you on a quick tour of a recently upgraded Courtyard by Marriott. In that review, I mentioned how impressed I was with the upgrades in the lobby. Marriott is obviously pretty impressed with their own progress, because they are currently celebrating the 100th hotel to be part of this exciting program.

As a reminder – the lobby upgrades include features like the innovative GoBoard® touch screen LCD TV with local information, news and weather as well as a brand new restaurant and bar dubbed The Bistro.

Marriott operates 860 Courtyard properties around the world, and the brand is doing so well, that an additional 200 will be opening within the next three years.

More information about the upgrades. as well as which hotels have been upgraded, can be found at GoCourtyard.com

Inside the new and improved Courtyards by Marriott

by Scott Carmichael on

Yes – you read the title correctly. This review is going to take a look at a Marriott Courtyard. By now, I’m guessing some of your are wondering what makes a review of a Marriott Courtyard special, any why we even bothered. Well, Marriott asked Gadling to come take a look at one of their recently renovated properties. I don’t have the numbers – but I’m guessing that Courtyards are probably one of the most popular hotel chains in the nation, so I took Marriott up on their invitation, and checked into the Chicago O’Hare Courtyard to see just how the chain has evolved.The lobby, bar and marketplace

Checking in was a breeze – as it should be. I was handed my room key and parking tag within minutes. The hotel clearly caters for all kinds of travelers, as the desk clerk handed my daughter two rubber duckies. We had not traveled too far to visit this property, but after a long flight, small touches like this can be a huge help when traveling with young kids.

The lobby is the best place to see just how the chain has improved their properties. Everything is spacious, bright and well designed. Of course, there is the obligatory collection of random crap art strategically placed throughout the area. Combined with a well laid out collection of sitting areas, the lobby is more welcoming than it used to be. Things have obviously been designed to welcome you, instead of just forcing you to check in and get you to your room.

The lobby area is also home to a cafe/bistro with full bar service and various snacks. Prices were quite reasonable (around $6 for a sandwich). This area certainly beats the old stuffy breakfast buffet desks found at other properties.

One really nice touch in the bar area is the addition or private seating areas with a personal TV. I’ve traveled a lot for business on my own, and I never really felt comfortable drinking on my own in the lobby. This way, travelers can sit on their own, yet still enjoy the lobby atmosphere. Very cool.

At the end of long day – you can purchase items from the marketplace. The selection was surprisingly decent, and a decent selection of alcoholic beverages and snacks were on offer, as well as several non-food items (medication, toiletries).

Towards the corner of the lobby is the boarding pass zone – two PC’s and laser printers are exactly what you need to check in for your flight. Thankfully, more and more hotels are putting these facilities in place.

Next to the boarding pass zone is a large flat panel TV with all flight departure information for O’Hare. Of course, as more and more of us use a smartphone with applications like Tripdeck, these screens are not always necessary, but still a very nice touch.

The local area smart panel is the toy I enjoyed playing with the most – it shows the news, weather, financial markets and local information, all on a massive touch screen. It can point you to the nearest restaurant or other attraction.

The business center is equipped with two (Windows XP powered) terminals. The speed was pretty decent, and the machines wipe themselves clean after use, (hopefully) removing any personal information collected.

Next to the terminals is an Ethernet jack for plugging in your own computer, which is obviously a good idea if you have confidential stuff to do, and no access to a VPN service you can use over the Wi-Fi network.

In this H1N1 world, I was pleasantly surprised to see hand sanitizer in the elevator. A quick squirt of this stuff may not protect you from all the nasty stuff out there, but after a long flight and cab ride, you never know.

The rooms

My room was quite spacious (rooms provided for reviews usually are). It consisted of a living room and a separate bedroom. Oddly enough, the configuration was setup for two queen beds. A fold-out sofa is present in the living room. Despite all the major upgrades in the lobby area, the rooms had not been upgraded as much. TV’s were still the old tube models. Carpets, beds and furniture did look recently renewed and were all in very good condition.

The desk offered everything you need to work – an Ethernet jack (speeds around 2100kb/s), 2 outlets in the lamp base and a decent bright light. As for the technology in the room – I could not locate any input jacks on the TV’s, which means you’ll need to watch stuff on your laptop, or pick something from the hotel channel lineup.

The bathroom was about as bland as they get – same bathroom style found in 1000’s of hotel rooms around the nation. I was quite impressed by the artwork on the towels and toilet paper:

Last time I saw art like that was on a cruise ship – someone put a lot of effort into those.

One final thing I’d like to point out was how well the water glasses were wrapped – as we read more and more about bad hygiene in hotels, I was happy to see someone put real effort into sealing the glasses. Of course, I have no way of knowing how clean they were when they were wrapped. Water bottles are $4 each, so the same kind of high prices found everywhere else.

Final thoughts

Rooms at this hotel are in line with most other Marriott Courtyard properties – around $90/night. This is a very good rate, especially for a hotel so close to the airport (with shuttle service).

I really liked the upgrades Marriott put in place. The lobby layout makes the hotel perfect for business travelers and leisure travelers alike. In-room Ethernet and speedy Wi-Fi (both free) are of course essential in any business hotel, and the Courtyard did not disappoint. The boarding area zone and interactive screen in the lobby are great tools for the frequent traveler.

The room was not as “upgraded” as I had hoped for, and could do with switching to better TV’s, but the room was clean, comfortable and the climate control and high speed Internet worked – things I really count on at any hotel.

Disclaimer: Marriott invited me to review this property, and paid for a one night stay. All opinions in this review are my own.