iflyjetz

Remove 'hotels', insert cell phones, cars, houses, restaurants, F vs C vs Y, cameras, furniture, clothes, etc. This same argument against staying in nicer hotels can be used against all consumer purchases.

I remember almost 15 years ago listening to a coworker complain about another coworker who was looking at different high end SLR cameras, trying to decide which one to buy. The non-camera buying coworker went on and on about what a waste of money it was to spend a ton of money for a camera. The camera buyer was an avid photographer who could discern the difference between a high end camera and one that I would buy - for me, a much lesser camera is fine. But I completely understood his desire to buy a high end camera and admonished the coworker who was complaining about the guy wasting HIS money on a nice camera. Just because I don't care about many of the functions in a camera doesn't mean that it was a waste of my coworker's money.

With more than 3000 hotel nights in everything from barely tolerable to some of the best in the world, I could provide a long list of items that make high end hotels worth the money for me. But that would simply be fodder for those that consider anyone who likes high end hotels a snob and/or fool.

I've been a Club Carlson Concierge. Club Carlson is a lower end hotel chain with a very small handful of very nice hotels. I don't hate Club Carlson; it has its place. I even have quite a few CC goldpoints. What I don't like is people misrepresenting CC's hotel portfolio as something it is not - high end, especially when those same people state that they don't understand what's so great about high end hotels. For that reason, it's a terrible fit for what the OP has stated his objective is - a high end European vacation with his wife.