- Most hotels created a tier system for housekeeping, in which those who paid more could expect a higher level of service.
At Hilton’s brands (e.g.; Astoria, Conrad, Conrad, Waldorf Astoria, Hampton Inn, DoubleTree and Embassy Suites) the housekeeping schedules vary, guests need to contact the front desk if they want a complimentary room cleaning.
At Marriott brands, which operates 30 brands with 8,000 properties containing 1,423,044 rooms in 131 countries and territories, its highest-end hotels (e.g.; Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, Bulgari, where rooms run upward of $550 a night)
provide free daily cleanings; at the next lower level (e.g.; Sheraton, Le Méridien, Delta) guests get a free “daily tidy”; guests at lowest-end brands (e.g.; Courtyard by Marriott, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and Moxy) get their
rooms cleaned every other day.
- The most expensive hotel room in the world costs $34,000 per night is the 4,300sq ft Ty Warner Penthouse at Four Seasons Hotel in New York.
- The Jailhotel Löwengraben in Lucerne, Switzerland is a converted prison now used as a hotel.
- The 125-year-old Victorian-style 385- room Grand Hotel Mackinac Island, Michigan, opened in July 1887, at a cost of $250,000, rooms were $3-$5 per night including meals, but there were no private bathrooms.
- The Bellagio Las Vegas, Neveda, opened in 1998 at a cost of $1.6 billion and added a $375 million Spa Tower in 2004.
- The Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, which opened in 1873 is America's oldest continually operating hotel; it was renovated at a cost of $170 million in 2009, and now offers 1,683 rooms and suites.
- The Waldorf-Astoria, New York, which opened in 1931, occupies an entire city block and was the world's largest (just under 2,000 rooms) and tallest (47 stories) hotel.
- Fontainebleau, Miami, FL, which opened in 1954, was renovated in 2008 at a cost of $1 billion into a 1,504-room with 12 restaurants and bars and a 40,000-square-foot spa.
- The 241-room Brown Palace Hotel & Spa, Denver , CO, has not been closed for a single minute since opening in 1892, and every U.S. President since Teddy Roosevelt in 1905
(except Calvin Coolidge and Barack Obama) - 17 in all - has stayed at this hotel.
- FBI director J. Edgar Hoover ate lunch at The 647-room Mayflower Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel,
which opened in 1925, every day for almost 20 years, and both Presidents Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt lived at this hotel for a while.
- The world’s first seven-star hotel is Burj Al Arab Hotel.
, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates,
built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a boat's sail.
- The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong is probably is the world's highest hotel. It is located in the top floors of the International Commerce Centre in
Hong Kong, at 484 meters (1,588 ft) above ground level.
- Many hotels in Singapore often had name changes which confused people, including local taxi drivers.
- Guinness World Records listed the First World Hotel in
Genting Highlands, Malaysia, as the world's largest hotel with a total of 6,118 rooms;
the Izmailovo Hotel in Moscow has the most rooms, with 7,500, followed by the
Venetian Palazzo Complex in Las Vegas (7,117 rooms) and MGM Grand Las Vegas (6,852 rooms).
- 23 of the largest 35 hotels within the same two-mile radius are located in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
- The Tropicana Las Vegas is a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada; opened its doors on April, 4, 1957, by the time the hotel had been built, it was by far
the most expensive Las Vegas resort yet built with a total construction costs amounted $15 million. The hotel has 1,467 rooms, a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) gaming floor, and 72,000 sq ft (6,700 m2) of convention and exhibit space.
- As of December 2013, Las Vegas has around 500,000 residents and 124,270 hotel rooms.
- The Algonquin is the oldest operating hotel in New York city and the first to have electronic key locks.
- General Douglas McArthur lived his last 14 years in the penthouse of the Waldorf Towers, a part of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
The composer Cole Porter also spent the last 25 years of his life in an apartment at the Waldorf Towers.
- Inventor Nikola Tesla lived the last ten years of his life at the New Yorker Hotel until he died in his room in 1943.
- Millionaire Howard Hughes lived in hotels during the last ten years of his life (1966–76), primarily in Las Vegas, as well as Acapulco, Beverly Hills,
Boston, Freeport, London, Managua, Nassau,
Vancouver, and others.
- The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, built on an artificial island, is structured in the shape of a boat's sail. The hotel has a helipad near the roof at a height of 210 m (689 ft) above ground,
and it is the fifth tallest hotel in the world (although 39% of its total height is made up of non-occupiable space)
- The Library Hotel in New York City is unique in that each of its ten floors is assigned one category from the Dewey Decimal System;
each room has a small complement of 50-100 books and decorations that accompany the theme, with 6,000 books overall throughout the hotel.
- The Jailhotel Löwengraben in Lucerne, Switzerland is a converted prison used as a hotel.
- The Luxor Las Vegas, a 30-story hotel and casino situated on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, U.S. is unusual due to its pyramidal structure;
when it opened, the hotel, which cost $375 million to build, was the tallest building on the strip and contained 2,526 rooms and a 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) casino.
- The Liberty Hotel in Boston used to be the
Charles Street Jail (built 1851), also known as the "Suffolk County Jail", an infamous former jail. Over the years,
the jail has housed a number of famous inmates including John White Webster,
James Michael Curley,
Malcolm X, and
Sacco and Vanzetti.
The Liberty Hotel, as it is now known, has retained much of the building's historic structure, including the famed rotunda.
- Hotel Kakslauttanen in Finland, a collection of glass igloos in Lapland that allow you to watch the Northern Lights.
The Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort hotel, opens year-round except for May.
- Built in Scotland and completed in 1936, The former ocean liner RMS Queen Mary in
Long Beach, California, United States uses its first-class staterooms as a hotel, after retiring in 1967 from Transatlantic service.
- The Wigwam Motels used patented novelty architecture in which each motel room was a free-standing concrete wigwam or teepee.
The first Wigwam Village was built in 1933 by Frank A. Redford in Horse Cave, Kentucky. Wigwam Village #2 was built in 1937 in Cave City, Kentucky.
Village #3 was built in 1940 in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana; this village was lost after it went out of business in 1954. Wigwam Village #4 was built in 1948 in
Orlando, Florida; it was razed in 1974, and a 326-room Vacation Lodge now sits on the site. The Wigwam Village #5 was built in 1940 in Bessemer, Alabama.
Village #6 was built in 1950 in Holbrook, Arizona; it is featured in the 1991 movie The Dark Wind, based on the 1982 Tony Hillerman
novel of the same name, as well as a sequence in the 2015 comedy film, Vacation
- Various Caboose Motel or Red Caboose Inn properties are built from decommissioned rail cars. Cabooses were used on every freight train until the 1980s, when safety laws requiring the presence of cabooses and full crews were relaxed.
The Red Caboose Motel & Restaurant began on a dare in 1970, with a bid on 19 cabooses at auction, and has evolved into a collection of eclectic
motel rooms in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country in the U.S.
- Japan's Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, founded in 705 AD by Fujiwara Mahito, was officially
recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest hotel in the world. It has been continuously operated by 52 generations of the same family (including adopted heirs) for over 1,300 years. Unofficially, the oldest hotel that is still in operation is
the Hoshi Ryokan, located in Awazu Onsen, Komatsu, Japan which opened in 718 AD.
- Key tips for saving on travel
- Book flights at least three weeks ahead of travel
- Book flights on a weekend
- Book hotels on a Friday night
- Start the journey on a Thursday or Friday
- Extend short, weekday-only trips to include a Saturday night
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