Blog

I am work­ing on a post to recap my recent trip to Van­cou­ver and Seat­tle. While on the trip, it occurred to me that I am a rather unapolo­getic hotel snob. If at all pos­si­ble, I pre­fer to stay in bou­tique or more upscale, branded hotels. I like nice beds with high thread count sheets. I pre­fer hotels with sleek, mod­ern archi­tec­ture and appoint­ments. Irre­spec­tive of rep­u­ta­tion, I’m not really fond of  hotels with frilly dec­o­ra­tions and furniture.

Fun­nily enough, while I was think­ing about my hotel snob­bery, I started think­ing to myself about how hotels have shifted. Specif­i­cally, do you remem­ber when stay­ing at the Hol­i­day Inn was some­thing spe­cial? Well, I do.

In much the same way that I occa­sion­ally wax nos­tal­gic about how peo­ple used to dress up when fly­ing, I took a few moments to recall really great mem­o­ries from my child­hood con­nected to hotels in my hometown. I dis­tinctly remem­ber going to the Howard Johnson’s, at the cor­ner of Maple and South West­nedge in Kala­ma­zoo, for din­ner. I would always order the fried clams and French fries. I don’t think we would orders sodas, but I remem­ber suck­ing down the water with the fancy cubed ice while I fig­ured out the puz­zles and games on my place mat. My par­ents would fre­quently tell me to slow down on the water so I wouldn’t ruin my appetite. The meal wouldn’t be com­plete with­out a hot fudge sun­dae. Every now and then, I was allowed to get some salt water taffy that was stacked up by the cashier’s station.

Prob­a­bly the most fond mem­ory from my child­hood, con­nected to a hotel, was when my par­ents took me to the Hol­i­day Inn West for my birth­day. We would pack up and spend the night. We would usu­ally go to the hotel’s restau­rant to order din­ner, and then we would hit the indoor pool and jacuzzi. We would hit the pool again in the morn­ing before get­ting some break­fast. I’m sure that gifts were present, but, quite hon­estly, the excite­ment about stay­ing at the hotel was the high­light and the real gift.

Again, all this hit me as I pat­ted myself on the back for the hotels I chose for our nights in Van­cou­ver and Seat­tle. For a moment, I won­dered whether I was mak­ing too much out of the qual­ity of the hotel; but then I snapped out of my lit­tle nos­tal­gia bub­ble. I won’t go that far. Inter­est­ingly, though, if you looked at the qual­ity of (most) Hol­i­day Inns back in the late 60s and early 70s, they would prob­a­bly be con­sid­ered on par with a Mar­riott or Hilton today.

Irre­spec­tive of the star-ratings of the hotel or the thread count of the linens, the mem­o­ries that my par­ents cre­ated for me are spe­cial and last­ing. For that, I thank them dearly!