In my opinion, the worst feature of most Hamptons is the use of flimsy, disposable plates, cups and eating utensils at breakfast. It's really unappetizing and cheapens the free breakfast offer, which is superfluous anyway for HHonors Gold and Diamond.

Recently an expensive stay at the Hampton in Vancouver, B.C. at least featured silverware plus solid plates and cups. It made a difference.

Do any other Hamptons do this?

Hi Explore,

I'm Diamond now, but have worked the front desk at a Hampton and still have many friends there. As you have probably noticed, Hampton has recently upgraded the breakfast selections and many other aspects of "the Hampton Experience", such as the new work desk for sitting in bed, new key packs, to-go breakfast bags to grab, signage around the property, DND signs, etc. This is being done to make ALL Hamptons a homogenous experience. What you experience in Vancouver, BC should almost be identical to Miami, FL. This logic can work well, if you believe in the McDonald's experience, but it does not always allow enough leeway to bend standards to fit the individual hotel.

For example, how many times have we stayed at an airport HI and missed the breakfast since it starts at 6am and had to catch an early flight? HI's are not allowed to have any other hours other than 6-10am...no exceptions. The new standards dictate the plate size, type, even vendors to obtain said. This applies to virtually every item in the hotel from breakfast food items, utensils and food PLACEMENT to furnishings in guest rooms.

Any HI that goes above these standards is breaking the franchise agreement. I can tell you on the days this particular HI is inspected by Quality Assurance, you will see the disposable plates and utensils. An example from my own hotel was upgraded premium soaps, shampoos and lotion in the bathroom of suites. On inspection days, we had to rush around and make a quick switch back to the lower quality HI standard issue.

So enjoy it when a hotel goes above and beyond, but if they do....hope you're not there on inspection day .

I just returned from a two-night stay at the Level 1 Hampton Inn Denver West/Federal Center (using points). I had read a review of this property on the Hampton Inn review thread that rated this property excellent, and was thus expecting a very good experience. However, the Denver property was not excellent in my opinion. Merely "good".

First, the high points. It had free high-speed Internet service that worked. It had a very spacious exercise facility with three treadmills, an elliptical cross-trainer, a stationary bike, and a univeral gym. It's business center is open 24-hours and allows free printing. It has a free shuttle to the Federal Center (which I used). All rooms have a mini fridge and a microwave.

However, there were several objectionable things about my stay. Both nights I was there, high school track athletes from around Colorado were also there. The hotel was the headquarters hotel for the state track meet. I would have appreciated being warned about this in advance, so that I could have booked elsewhere. The hotel kept a pretty good lid on the noise (on the first night, I overheard the desk clerk instructing the hotel's security guard to "bust heads"), but they were very short-staffed. The check-in desk was swamped. The phone was ringing off the hook, which made it very difficult for the clerk to serve those who were waiting in line.

The breakfast area was very large, but not large enough when the hotel was full of teenagers. The first morning the hot item was the breakfast burrito and the second morning it was biscuits and gravy. Apparently, the hotel does not have a sufficient method for heating large quantities of their hot item, since the breakfast burritos were cold (and served on a non-heated platter) at the time I was eating, and the gravy for the biscuits were in a crock-pot that could not heat the gravy fast enough to catch up with the hotel refilling it from a can. Both mornings, I had to use the microwave to get a palatible meal. And there was only one microwave -- which meant long waits behind the teenagers to use it. Furthermore, the Denver hotel only had small plates, so it was not possible to heat much food at one time. The Denver hotel also served hard-boiled eggs each morning, but they were hidden within a ceramic hen -- and thus I missed the eggs the first morning.

While the business center has free printing, all they have are two cheap consumer-grade inkjet printers. Neither of them produced what I would consider to be business-grade results.

My room had a comfortable business chair, but it let me down, literally. The gas cylinder had a slow leak, so about every ten minutes, I had to re-raise the chair. Finally, I got tired of it, and I complained. The front desk had trouble understanding what I was complaining about -- initially they thought I was reporting a gas leak in the room! Finally, their maintenance guy came by and checked it out, and then he brought in a different chair that worked fine.

Some of the upgraded HI (Bellingham WA) have both the metal/ceramic and plactic. As for the ordinary HI etc, I use 2 paper plates and 2 coffee cups to minimize the flimsy aspects of a single layer. As for the plastic tableware, there aint too much tough stuff to cut.

MisterNice