Reading Hotel Reviews is a Life’s Work

I’ve spent a good part of today booking travel for up coming trips all the way out to October. I miss the days when I called our wonderful travel gent Barbara Crane and just tell her where I needed to go and she would take care of everything. Barbara always knew the best places and the best deals. Now I have to do everything myself. Reading reviews is about the biggest time suck I can find, but it is how I figure out if I am ever going to stay some place.

As I was comparing one hotel to another I had a terrible flashback of a Holiday Inn in Charlotte I stayed in my first year working out of college. I was there to sell some mail opening machines and my company’s standard hotel was Holiday Inn. It was back in the day when the rooms opened out onto the sidewalk.

This particular morning I had calls to make to customers so I ordered room service for breakfast so I could work. I should have known better than to order a bagel in Charlotte in 1983. The tray came and there was a little paper cup of “cheese” next to the non-toasted bagel.

I was still making phone calls and I let the tray sit on the table for a while. When I finally got around to thinking about breakfast I was furious to see that they had sent blue cheese instead of cream cheese. What did they know about bagels in the Queen City back then.

I called to the restaurant to say they had sent blue cheese and the hostess said, “Miss, we don’t have blue cheese.”

Well that was about the worst thing she could have said. You can bet I never stayed at that Holiday Inn again. How I wish there was an internet to leave a review at for that place.