This past weekend, we were lucky enough to be in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. for the grand opening of B Ocean hotel, which soft opened in January and is the first in a new brand of hotels.
It’s a great-looking hotel with all the signs of modern trendiness: it’s white, it’s minimalist and austere, and the lobby brightens up with colored lights come nightfall.
The hotel is right across the street from a great beach, and every single room has a beautiful ocean view — no rooms face the back of the hotel. The personable Holli Ugalde (winner of Hell’s Kitchen Season 7) helms the casual B’stro restaurant (which will appear in every B hotel), and across the lobby is the dimly-lit, delicious Saia, serving inventive (if expensive) sushi and hand-crafted cocktails.
A few weeks ago, we spent the night at Mondrian SoHo. This brand new hotel from Morgans Hotel Group was generating so much buzz that we just had to check it out first-hand for ourselves (especially because we love its sister properties, Mondrian South Beach and Mondrian LA, so darn much).
And while we (okay, I) sadly don’t have a future as an iPhone videographer, we took these short videos so that you could get a sense of the trendy, purple-and-white lobby. They’re pretty much the same, except the second one focuses on the funky silver detailing on the ceiling. Enjoy!
Buena Vista Luxury Villas, Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica
As you may know by now, Oyster investigators recently returned from visiting hotels in the beautiful country of Costa Rica. Although we’ll soon add our hotel coverage to the site, in the meantime we thought we’d hold you over with some great photos we snapped on location. Enjoy! And stay tuned for more photos in the coming days…
If you’re a morning person, you may have caught Oyster.com featured in a segment on NBC’s Today Show this morning. Last week we were on location with the Today Show in beautiful Costa Rica, where an Oyster investigator found the above Photo Fakeout.
La Mariposa Hotel only shows one photo of a Full Ocean View Room on its website (seen above, left). When we checked into that same room type, we sadly only found one of the three windows shown in the hotel’s photo.
The room shown on the hotel’s website does exist — it’s the Full Ocean View Room that’s located at the corner of the hotel. We, however, received a Full Ocean View Room in the middle of the hallway, and therefore only had one window.
To be fair, the view from our balcony was beautiful, and the hotel is known for its amazing panoramic views from its restaurant and pool — just be cautious when choosing which room type to book.
H.Bloom will deliver fresh flowers to your door, however often you like
Lots of hotels sell their bed and bath products either online or in house, which means you can sleep on Westin’s Heavenly Bed, clean yourself with W’s Bliss bath products, or relax in a Fairmont waffle robe – feeling truly pampered even at home. It’s vacation all year long! But beds and bathrobes aside, one of our favorite things about staying in a nice hotel is the fresh flowers that greet you in the lobby and make your guest room just a little bit brighter.
Now, thanks to our friends at H.BLOOM, you can pretend you live in a classy hotel by filling your home with fresh flowers on a weekly basis (or biweekly, or monthly), giving your home a special touch. With H.BLOOM, you choose how often you want to receive your flowers, select the product line that best suits your taste, and voila! Beautiful, fresh flowers are delivered right to your home or office.
By now, after finding so many Photo Fakeouts, we’re used to the basics of hotel marketing images. Take, for example, the perfect (ahem, perfectly airbrushed) blue sky seen in the above photo (the left one, that is). It cascades so nicely from midnight blue down to cornflower blue.
But when we stumbled upon this marketing image of Hotel Shangri La, Santa Monica (a lovely hotel, by the way) — first on discount sale website Ideeli and then on Orbitz.com – the things that really struck us were the two balls of light. What are those, we thought, and why were they randomly placed on the photo? As it turns out, those flashes of light are not random at all, but rather strategically placed to cover unsightly objects. One ball of light covers a lamp post right outside the hotel’s door, and the other covers a traffic light.
Neither object is something to be ashamed of, Shangri La! Traffic lights are a part of everyday life. But hotel marketers, of course, need to pretend that their beauitful hotel stands in a perfect vacuum — heaven forbid the hotel exist anywhere near streets, or cars, or lamp posts, or traffic lights.
Private Pool at the One Bedroom Cottage at the Jamaica Inn
Last week we told you about 5 unique, romantic hotel amenities, and the hotels that play host to them. With Valentine’s Day coming up, it’s time to find the perfect romantic hotel, and perhaps even one with a special feature (hammocks on the beach, anyone? Personal fireplace, perhaps?). So in the spirit of love (and the spirit of helping you impress your significant other), we’re bringing you 6 more whimsical, romantic hotel features.
Here’s what they are, and where to find them:
Private pool
The Hotel: Jamaica Inn, Jamaica Book a one-bedroom or two-bedroom cottage at Jamaica Inn in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and you’ll find yourself with a gorgeous private plunge pool overlooking the azure sea. It will likely look the one shown above, or this one. You probably won’t mind that your private cottage is beautiful and elegant, or that you’re staying at one of the nicest hotels in Jamaica.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, we could go ahead and list our picks for the most romantic hotels, but we thought we’d take a more playful approach to helping you find the perfect hotel. So we’ve picked out the most unique, special, fun romantic touches that we’ve seen hotels do, and below we’ll tell you where to find said features. And stay tuned, we have another edition coming your way soon!
The special feature: A designated “kissing point” The hotel:The Kahala Hotel and Resort, Hawaii This Hawaiian hotel has beautiful grounds, which includes a “kissing point” that juts out into the ocean, complete with a bench for couples who need to steal more than just one kiss. For a similar experience, couples can also visit Half Moon in Jamaica and smooch in the resort’s gazebo just off the shore.
We’re kicking off this week — and this year! — with a simple, beautiful post. If this doesn’t make you smile through your Monday-morning-still-hung-over glum, we’re not sure what will. Here’s to all the great 2011 travel experiences to come, hopefully like the one above!
The above photograph was taken at Tensing Pen, an intimate collection of 17 cottages (22 guest rooms total) in Negril, Jamaica, where guests come to unplug and enjoy the breathtaking cliffs. The hotel is home to the bridge pictured here, from which guests can plunge into the sea below, if they dare. Take a peek at this bridge lit up at night, or see all of our photos of Tensing Pen.
Sure, Washington, D.C. may be full of suits and seriousness, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a handful of hoteliers who pulled out all the stops when designing their hotels. We’ve found the best hotel bathrooms in Washington, D.C., and we’ve put them into one fun, easy-to-view slideshow for you. And while the hotel bathrooms in this city can’t measure up to the over-the-top ones found in cities like Las Vegas or Miami, we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. See which bathrooms made a splash in D.C.
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