TheFlyingDoctor

I wanted to be annoyed at Kimpton, for a single reason: ‘Guest Amenity Fees’. This practice seems to have spread from resorts to city hotels, and given the laughable benefits offered, just comes across as a cash-grab. Take for example Kimpton’s Hotel Monaco Seattle. Click around enough in the booking flow, and you’ll find a note that:

I have made precisely one phone call from a hotel room in my life. IHG Rewards members - even those without status such as myself - get free wifi anyway. I don’t know what Riot Athletics is, but it doesn’t sound like part of a relaxing holiday. Car2Go is a car-share scheme, but neither my wife nor I drive.

You could argue that you should just ignore any intermediate pricing and treat this as an unavoidable part of the total cost, just the like the city and state taxes / fees that won’t appear to start with. But, crucially, if you ask IHG’s website to sort Seattle properties by price, you’ll see the Monaco as cheaper than the Crowne Plaza - eventually you might discover that’s not true, as the latter hasn’t jumped on the amenity fee bandwagon, but only by proceeding to a final quote for each property in turn.

Thus I abandoned the Kimpton brand - and eventually the entire IHG family - for Seattle. In Portland, though, I opted for the Hotel Vintage despite the benefits - like the decor - being heavily wine themed.

Given that I don’t drink, this would be at best half-useful to us; note also that the wine welcome and bar beverage are on-offs, despite the fact that you’re paying for them every day. However, my resentment did not last long once we actually reached the property...

I’d picked up on Kimpton’s secret social password scheme, where use of a magic phrase at check-in will get you a surprise bonus. After awkwardly introducing myself and announcing that I was ‘out of office’, I was expecting a drinks voucher or a handful of points. Instead, the check-in staff dashed to the back office to receive a wheel-of-fortune contraption, with a variety of prizes to be won. Alaina’s first spin landed on free parking - probably one of the most financially lucrative, except we didn’t have a car (and I doubt you’d fit the Coast Starlight in their basement). Impressively, they allowed us a second spin rather than taking a ‘you win some, you lose some’ attitude. This netted us even more wine, with the choice of a full bottle of red or white. The welcome drinks turned out to be vouchers rather than on-the-spot pour, so in theory we could make use of both; we were also given a $10 credit for the minibar.

These turned out to be relatively minor check-in perks, however. On reaching our door, we discovered that we’d been upgraded. Multiple times. From the entry level King Deluxe room I’d booked, we’d skipped over the other room categories, past the King Studio Suites, and into a King Reserve Spa Suite.

This was incredible. As in, it didn’t seem credible. Having a reasonably common surname that has caused erroneous assignments to undeserved rooms before, I actually returned to the front desk. They confirmed that yes, it was for us - although what warranted the upgrade was not disclosed. I doubt it was the social password, but I’m also nothing-tier in IHG Rewards and not even a member of Kimpton Karma. That said, I used to stay a lot in IHG properties and have since focused elsewhere, so may have ended up on some sort of win-back strategy. Perhaps they were just overbooked and we were in the right place at the right time.

Regardless, with possession confirmed - and that bottle of red delivered - we happily settled in. As well as two to three times the floorspace, our enhanced living area featured a dining table that would seat eight; a small kitchen area with fridge and sink plus bar seating; a huge corner sofa; and a second television to make up for the one in the bedroom being so far away. The real star of the show, though, was in the bathroom - the ‘spa’ description corresponds to the addition of a huge deep-soak tub.

With a forecast of 36C for my wife’s birthday, we scrubbed the outdoor beer festival idea - more on our replacement in a moment - and limited our sightseeing activities to the edges of days. Even this wasn’t ideal - an early start (aided by a continued slight body clock offset from local time) would still see us sweating through 30C by 10am and thus choosing ice cream for breakfast. Further excesses of heat attained by high noon also saw little decline by sundown, lingering well into the evening. Thus we spent a lot of time chilling out in the room instead, so the extra space - and the tub - were much appreciated!