Red Room Chronicles

I stayed one very uneventful night at the Residence Inn White Plains two nights ago.

There are two notable things about this hotel. First, the rooms are huge. My one bedroom studio suite was about 800 square feet. Second, there’s easy access to Manhattan. The White Plains Metro North stop is a five minute walk away. From there its about a forty minute ride to Grand Central station.

My reason for staying there was the fact that I need to get to Manhattan for a 9AM meeting, but also had my car with me and didn’t want to fight traffic at rush hour. So I enjoyed the complimentary guest parking while I was at my meeting. Afterwards I hopped back on an off peak train to White Plains where I picked up my car and drove home to upstate NY. Mission accomplished!

I was recently afforded the privilege of getting a preview of the now public Plug In To Marriott campaign recently launched by Marriott Hotels. Some of the folks in Marriott public relations and advertising are watching the blog (Hi all!) and invited me to impart my opinion on the campaign.

I don’t really know a lick about advertising or public relations but I do know what I like in a hotel. What I saw and heard about the campaign from their new website at www.plugintomarriott.com looked really promising. Certain rooms at a growing list of Marriott hotels have what really amounts to a digital media center that will allow you to plug in and get the benefits of your various portable media devices. This media center also doubles as a very nice flat panel television.

So you can plug in your laptop and work via the flat screen tv display. You can plug in your mp3 player and take advantage of stereo sound throughout the room. You can also plug in a DVD player, digital camera or camcorder as well. Portable game systems are pluggable as well. The setup will definitely be a boon to folks like me who travel with gadgets. The camera and game options sound great for family vacations.

I welcome the addition of upgraded technology in hotel rooms. It really helps to be in a place that fits the digital lifestyle (if that’s up your alley) when you have to be away at home. With something like this the implementation is as important as the announcement though. The systems need to work. I’m sure that won’t be a problem. One potential issue I mentioned to the Marriott team involved cables. What if I forget or just don’t have the right cable? Would be nice to have some standard loaners available at the front desk.

The reservation process is affected here as well. I think it’s really important for people to be able to get a guarantee for these rooms ahead of time. If such a room is not available I think that’s okay. But a traveler should also be able to definitively reserve a plugged in room if one is available at the time of booking.

I also heard that Marriott is planning to provide a video tutorial on the system which will be accessible via the television. I think that’s a good idea so people can understand and get the most out of the capabilities of these new rooms.

One thing I would like to see associated with this effort which I forgot to mention while on the call with the Marriott team was RSS feeds. How about an RSS feed (or email updates) to provide updates on the list of hotels that have these special rooms? For the moment you can go to the Plug In website to view the list of 25 hotels that have added this very special digital amenity.

The grace of heaven has lead me to the Residence Inn Saddle River. Sounds dramatic I know but what a day!

I started by driving from Woodstock, NY to Newark Airport. Once at the airport I was on and then off a flight to Atlanta on Continental Airlines.

It became evident around 4:30PM that no one was going anywhere so I got in line with the masses to try to get a refund on my flight. After waiting a frustratingly long period of time on line I decided to make a dash for the Continental President’s Club at Terminal A in Newark Airport. I’m not a member but the $45 day access fee was worth it to save a heck of a lot of time. The agent there spent almost an hour on hold waiting for them to finish my refund.

In the meantime I got some coffee and set up at a workstation. I canceled my reservation at the Courtyard Executive Park in Atlanta.

At around 7:30PM I decided to get moving. The airport monorail system was closed at Newark. Luckily my parking lot was near Terminal A. The short walk got pretty long while trying to walk down and unshoveled walkway in the midst of an ice storm. I departed the parking lot at 8PM.

I had decided to drive part of the way home and get a hotel. The roads are beyond treacherous right now. Snow and freezing rain are everywhere. As a result the 1 hour drive from Newark Airport to Saddle River was a white knuckle affair. My knuckles turning white gripping the steering wheel while knuckleheads in four wheel drive vehicles and tractor trailers careened through inches of ice and snow.

There are quite a few small hotels along Route 17 in New Jersey. Most of them are probably less expensive than the $103 AAA rate here at the Residence Inn. I knew what I would get here though. The theme of this evening is peace of mind. Sometimes the peace of mind of a brand is a really good thing. And my wife and mom have the peace of mind knowing that I’m off the road and safe for the evening.