Harry’s Place

…reaches for gun…

I just puked a little in my mouth.

Great catch, Gene.

To me, a motel is, ideally, a totally anonymous experience. Check in, crash, wake up, split. But if I were stayed at a Thompson, I’d hang around the lobby to see assholes in full plumage.

In retrospect, Bobby Kennedy would probably be eager to spend less time in hotels.

**Too edgy for Washington? Nah, general manager Brett Blass told us yesterday: D.C. is chock-full of arty, well-educated hipsters, and the response to the ad was enthusiastic: “We actually had people tell us stories why they think they are revolutionaries,” he said. “It hit a chord.”**

Brett Blass.

“I think I am a revolutionary because____________________.”

If I’m spending my own money it’s Formule 1 for me…

their ‘manifesto’ is

Formule 1 means…

*depending on the country

The best hotel I’ve been to is the Met in Bangkok - I would recommend that to anyone.

I’d pay a premium to stay in a trailer park if TH were the only rooms in town.

On second thoughts I’m looking forward to anonymous motels and ‘chicken fried someting’ on my drive from NOLA to the panhandle.

Is it bad that I think I would only recommend this hotel to my friend Abdul and his trusty martyrdom belt?

By the very nature of the beast, clearly anybody posting on HP will wish to stay in a hotel with wireless broadband, and to hell with the spirit of Jack Keruac and pretentious tosh! In general, you don’t stay in a hotel for the good time. You stay in a hotel because you are in X, have nowhere else to stay and your purpose of coming to X is not to enjoy hotel life. (Unless you are infinitely sad, in which case a “hip” hotel isn’t going to cheer you up.)

Benjamin: “The best hotel I’ve been to is the Met in Bangkok”
How much did you pay per hour, as a matter of interest?

What’s a “hotel”?

Mrs Johnson’s Guest House in Margate is good enough for me.

OK, the people from TH seem to be assholes. But, frankly, I do not care about the character of the hotel manager (or owner by the way) as far as the hotel keeps its promises (confort, silence,…) and the price seems adequate to me.
If I acted emotionally against the publicity, I will be reponding as irrationally to it as if I were saying yes, yes, yes without second thoughts.
PS: Yes, I like luxury hotels, by the way. Too bad I have not enough money to be a regular customer.

You may be able to take or leave the marketing but the worry for me would be that the place might be packed full of idiots who find it irresistable and would get on my nerves by flashmobbing the diningroom while I was having my breakfast.

Oh come on, really, who gives a toss if they’ve written a ton of pretentious guff? So what if they’re appealing to the Wallpaper reading crowd? (The Wallpaper city guides are rather good intros but I digress.) I’d rather stay in a hotel like that than an identikit chain. Of the hotels I’ve been in over the last year I much preferred the ‘designer’ ones in Prague than the Hilton I stayed in.

Usually within the marketing system you will have enough people with good sense to put this sort of childish indulgence down without mercy. Obviously this one got away and it will take them some time to recover from this sort of fakeness, which ironically is the exact opposite of the image they are trying to convey.

You will be surprised how many times times you get draft campaigns from creatives and copywriters with images of Mussolini or Hitler in some positive light making some equally silly point never mind that will destroy your career and your brand for good.

Oh, Muffin, I wish every hotel had wireless broadband. And not just wireless broadband, but FREE wireless broadband. Mr Trellis and I are sick of paying £15 a night.

That blurb reads like it’s been written by someone who had looked up “cool” on Wikipedia.

You’ll find us watching Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Coffee and Cigarettes, Badlands, Blow Up, Le Mans. Or listening to The White Album, the Sex Pistols, Sinatra

I will try not to find them in that case.

and we don’t pick sides between the East Coast and the West Coast.

So there’s room in the Thompson for Jay-Z *and* Snoop Dogg?

As long as I’m unlikely to be beaten up before I return there in the evening, I don’t care what kind of a hotel I stay in.

Not one non-Anglophone film, either.

Philistines.

Yeah, I hate it when I happen upon the proprietors of the hotel where I’m staying and they’re watching bad films like Meet The Fockers, or listening to not-good music like Oasis. I want the people who run my hotel to be ingesting good culture, so it’s TH for me!!!

Other son and fiancee went to a wedding in Cornwall last weekend of a friend of his fiancee’s family. Train arrived near midnight, and son and fiancee’s parents continued by car to their B&B in a small village. Fiancee’s mother phoned from the car for exact directions. B&B owner directed her, telling her they would find the door open and to select rooms between themselves. They arrived to find a hostelry lavishly appointed and furnished with staggering taste and elegance “Like something out of Grand Designs” according to son. Laid out on the table was a selection of delicacies and cakes. Just as they were about to sample them, 2 cars roared up, decanting a party of 10 Germans. There was a confused exchange along the lines of What are you doing here, we are staying here, no we are, before the Germans decisively announced they had hired the entire place for the weekend, and son’s mother realised she had misdialled one digit. A full Victor Meldrew or Larry David scenario of being turfed out of bed was only avoided by the close timing of their respective arrivals.

As they slunk off to their B&B around the corner, son said to German “This place is amazing”. “It should be, it is very eggzpenzive” was the pointed response.

Their friendly landlady who welcomed them to her cheerful but modest place round the corner must have wondered why they were a little crestfallen.

son’s mother in law, not mother.

Poor “other” son, ami!

I think I know of that B&B - if it’s the one I’m thinking of, it is Trip Advisor’s No. 1 place to stay in the whole of the UK.

I don’t want wireless broadband or expensive artsy stuff, just a room with an ashtray where smoking is allowed.

NB: “I’d rather stay in a hotel like that than an identikit chain.”

But that’s kind of the problem, because it *is* an identikit chain, it’s just an identikit chain that’s designed to appeal to people like yourself, the fact that it’s convinced itself it isn’t a chain is irrelevant. The idea of mandatory non-conformity this kind of thing represents really is incredibly irritating. Rebels who all think the same aren’t really rebels, no?

Wireless broadband and a reasonably priced (ish) room service breakfast and I’m done.

But it’s an identikit chain with about a dozen, rather than a few hundred, branches. At least they put some effort into making it stand out a little.

Preferring the decor doesn’t mean I buy into the waffly ethos. It just means that when I’m on holiday I’d like some variety in my accomodation.

Checklist cool. “Bohemian Like You” by the Dandy Warhols plays throughout every room in every hotel, all day, every day, and all of the staff hate themselves.

“Isn’t the last place you want to find “an element of edge and surprise” at your goddamn hotel?”

Not quite the last.

Places where I do not want to find “edge and surprise”:-

Post Office
Police Station
My bank branch
Accident and Emergency (though you certainly find “edge” there and it’s sadly not a surprise)
My local (though they could sell cutting-edge crisps instead of Walkers)

I suspect the purpose of the marketing is to make you think you will be more likely to fuck an equally desperate fellow guest at this hotel and not feel too seedy afterwards. “We are a tribe, nomadic in nature joined by common threads” means “we want some casual nooky and we’re not thinking too much about herpes”. This seems to be an american pastime that will hopefully not catch on elsewhere. Familiarity towards strangers is not something that should be encouraged.

I’m not a fan of Boutique hotels, and chains of them seem to be rather a contradiction.

However, there is something rather satisfying at staying at a nice hotel - like a Grand Hyatt or a Westin. OTOH most luxary hotels (eg Four Seasons, MO, etc) are way too stuffy for my liking - esp in the UK.

Most of the time I’m quite happy with a Holiday Inn Express, though I would not go as low as Motel6/Super8 - unless in some unusual situation.