IHG Diamond – how much longer…?

[sloth]

JDB wrote:

@jj – unfortunately one can end up in some fairly rotten hotels so I’m not sure Airbnbs are really very different in that regard. The right owner is fairly critical. We had one in Florence who said that since were arriving late she would leave a lasagne for us which she did together with salad, wine, mineral water and things for breakfast. It was a duly good sign of a lovely place. We are staying in one later this month – actually booked direct as 25% cheaper than Airbnb where the owner sounds a very cultured woman and once she had spoken to me offered lots of helpful local addresses, will leave a number of things and wondered if there any flowers my wife didn’t like! I’m quietly confident!

Another we are returning to after a good stay last year, the architect owner lives there some of the year so no locals are being displaced and the entrance is a bit weird but inside is the most wonderful treasure trove of books and objets d’art in a full refurb.

sometimes when I read your posts @JDB its in the sound of Frasier’s voice…I do enjoy these type of posts 🙂

In all seriousness I do agree with you tho that its better to pick the place(s) you are staying based on the things that you want…

[Harrier25]

JDB wrote:

eggs Benedict/Royale

err yes, maybe the standard Hilton/IHG breakfast room offerings aren’t for you!

[NorthernLass]

You can make a decent approximation of benedict/royale by ordering poached eggs on toast, adding some ham or smoked salmon from the buffet and seasoning with some mayonnaise and Dijon mustard. Not having to cook or clean up afterwards is a big bonus IMO. We do a fair bit of self-catering but it can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore.

But even a Hilton buffet normally provides mushrooms, tomatoes, juice and some fruit so you can feel virtuous about having all of your 5 a day at one sitting! (Yes I do have a lot more than 5, but breakfast is a good start).

[JDB]

Harrier25 wrote:

JDB wrote:

eggs Benedict/Royale

err yes, maybe the standard Hilton/IHG breakfast room offerings aren’t for you!

Actually, eggs Benedict is something I mentioned as @Rhys seems to like them in reviews and a number of regular posters seem to order them in hotels and lounges with à la carte. I rarely order them as they increasingly aren’t properly done even in 5* hotels, so a poached egg or fried egg is a safer bet. They seem to use amateurs at breakfast time so they make rookie errors like adding spinach directly onto the muffin so it goes green and soggy, use awful ham, poach the egg hard and as for what is supposed to pass for hollandaise. It’s not very difficult to make properly, but it is quite time consuming.

[Aston100]

Ah yes, snobbery has finally descended upon this thread at last.

[BBbetter]

JDB wrote:

Aston100 wrote:

jj wrote:

More HfP readers should break the chains that bind them to their loyalty overlords. It’s wonderfully liberating and results in much better holidays.

Is that a fact?

Yes, there’s a whole wide world of great accommodation outside chains and if you ask nicely they even give you free breakfast and much more without needing a prison loyalty number.

JDB, not everyone is staying at a four seasons or mandarin oriental or SLH type hotels where asking nicely can mean something. Many need to stay at a HI or CP often and asking nicely will at best get you a polite refusal.

Also you need to stop assuming everybody travels without kids like you and is happy to cook breakfast during holidays. Or that everyone is happy to arrange alternate accommodation on day one when the Airbnb turns out to be crap and start negotiating with the host.

If emailing hotels or negotiating with the host is what rocks your boat, fair enough. You don’t have to repeat it as nauseam.

[JDB]

@Northern Lass – no, just no! That’s too awful even for a Bateman cartoon.

The Hilton buffet you describe could be fine but are any of those items actually of any quality? Freshly squeezed juice, proper flavoursome tomatoes (currently the big winter ones), ripe fruit, decent mushrooms.

[NorthernLass]

With spinach it would be Eggs Florentine, surely? Though I can legitimately avoid it due to familial high iron levels!

[strickers]

Most scrambled eggs served in hotels are made from 1Kg pouches, even some poached eggs are delivered ready cooked and vacuum packed. I love eggs benedict but I can’t remember the last time I had even half decent hollandaise sauce in a chain hotel.

[JDB]

@BBbetter – you forget that us old folk have travelled with children for many years and didn’t have the internet to ask questions. We had to work it out for ourselves with help sometimes from family. So I’m not assuming anything. We don’t have any grandchildren yet, but do have nieces, nephews and cousins etc. who travel with small children. They mainly prefer rental places partly for reasons of economy/value, but also not wanting to have to share a room with children, have much more space and be more flexible.

Most of my family enjoy cooking and frankly making a nice breakfast is a doddle. Most places have a dishwasher etc.

I have totally fallen out with Four Seasons as standards have collapsed while prices have gone stratospheric, but I get your drift although it’s totally adrift! We stay in all sorts of hotels for maybe 100-120 nights a year from the very top of the scale to some very modest ones. We don’t actually holiday in the expensive places so much talked of here because it just seems such bad value, so I think you are making an awful lot of assumptions.

We take very considerable care in choosing/booking places but frankly there’s as much risk of a hotel being crap for your purposes vs an Airbnb. We have only ever not checked into one (which was actually VRBO) which turned out oddly well. We have not stayed or checked out early from far more hotels, but then Airbnb is a more recent thing.

As for asking nicely, even very modest family run hotels appreciate human contact rather than emails or just booking.com. Personal contact and relationships still count for a lot in business as well as hospitality – luckily many youngsters, perhaps including you disagree and hide, so we get a good hearing and great results!

If I went to a dreary chain that has dehumanised everything then probably I won’t get a good response. That’s why we avoid – they aren’t even cheap these places.

As for it ‘rocking my boat’ communicating with hosts/hotels it just seems like basic common sense to make one’s own luck and ensure everything is going to be right rather than just pitching up with family and hope for the best or to need to wave some intergalactic card expecting a red carpet to be rolled out.

[JDB]

NorthernLass wrote:

With spinach it would be Eggs Florentine, surely? Though I can legitimately avoid it due to familial high iron levels!

Unfortunately most of these places don’t know which way is up. Eggs Florentine shouldn’t have any ham or smoked salmon but some places try to be a bit fancy which is when it all goes wrong.

[JDB]

strickers wrote:

Most scrambled eggs served in hotels are made from 1Kg pouches, even some poached eggs are delivered ready cooked and vacuum packed. I love eggs benedict but I can’t remember the last time I had even half decent hollandaise sauce in a chain hotel.

It’s just too ghastly for words! We have even had Hellmans passed off as hollandaise, so it’s just not a safe thing to order any more,

[Harrier25]

God help the staff if you ever stay in a HIX and turn up for the breakfast @JDB! 🫣

[BBbetter]

Aston100 wrote:

Ah yes, snobbery has finally descended upon this thread at last.

True. He got bored of trolling people on the BA elite status thread and was slow to joining this one.

[Aston100]

Harrier25 wrote:

God help the staff if you ever stay in a HIX and turn up for the breakfast @JDB! 🫣

I think he’d rather go to an ironing course than a HIX

[JDB]

Aston100 wrote:

Ah yes, snobbery has finally descended upon this thread at last.

I think you appear to be confusing a preference for real food with snobbery.

And while I haven’t stayed in a HIX I stay at the Premier Inn at LHR because the fancy places others seem to stay at are too expensive/bad value and not very good.

[Harrier25]

You get BBC Breakfast News to watch on mute with subtitles while you prepare and eat at the HIX’s that I’ve stayed at. It’s a real treat!

[Colin MacKinnon]

@JDB – How did you know that I was an Intergalactic Cosmic Ambassador?

That’s exactly what I tell my pals when they ask about our great deals…. and I don’t mention us taking your advice of being human!

It astounds me how happy so many staff are when you stop and say thanks to them. We literally had a young doctor in tears on holiday last month when I said I made a special point of stopping and thanking cleaning staff in hospitals, because without cleaners there would be horrendous amounts of infections. She was a bit burnt out, partly because she didn’t like being the “hero” when it was team effort.

That’s an extreme example, perhaps.

It’s not about tips, and money. It is about human connections, understanding and communication.

Since 25th January is fast approaching, the last lines of Rabbie Burns’s poem A Man’s a Man for a’That:

That Man to Man the warld o’er
Shall brithers be for a’ that.

[jj]

Whilst @JDB risks becoming a parody of himself, I have to agree that hotel breakfasts are usually dismal and that it’s often better to prepare your own if you have the facilities.

A cooked breakfast isn’t exactly a healthy option, so when I do have a fry-up, I want to make the most of it. Most hotel buffets offer congealed luke-warm eggs, second-rate soggy bacon and third-rate shrivelled ultra processed sausages washed down with poorly mixed reconstituted orange juice. It’s the kind of food that threatens your health with no compensating sensory pleasure.

Similarly, the pastries are factory-produced, the bread is best buddies with the Chorleywood process, the ‘Greek’ yogurt is actually Greek-style with thickeners and emulsifiers, the muesli is bereft of fruit and nuts, the ham is reformed, the bircher is over-sweet, and the fruit is rock-hard and underripe. Omelettes and scrambled eggs are made with processed eggs, and the pancake mix comes from a packet.

It’s foul.

How much healthier and tastier to go to the supermarket and buy some real Greek yogurt and some ripe fruit? Effort? None. Cost? Negligible. Pleasure? Immeasurable.

[AndrewT]

Are we trying to set a new record for the number of posts totally unrelated to the thread title? (and yes I know this is another one)

Suffered a US HIX breakfast this morning, complete with paper plates and plastic cutlery. Pretty dire.

[Aston100]

jj wrote:

Whilst @JDB risks becoming a parody of himself, I have to agree that hotel breakfasts are usually dismal and that it’s often better to prepare your own if you have the facilities.

A cooked breakfast isn’t exactly a healthy option, so when I do have a fry-up, I want to make the most of it. Most hotel buffets offer congealed luke-warm eggs, second-rate soggy bacon and third-rate shrivelled ultra processed sausages washed down with poorly mixed reconstituted orange juice. It’s the kind of food that threatens your health with no compensating sensory pleasure.

Similarly, the pastries are factory-produced, the bread is best buddies with the Chorleywood process, the ‘Greek’ yogurt is actually Greek-style with thickeners and emulsifiers, the muesli is bereft of fruit and nuts, the ham is reformed, the bircher is over-sweet, and the fruit is rock-hard and underripe. Omelettes and scrambled eggs are made with processed eggs, and the pancake mix comes from a packet.

It’s foul.

How much healthier and tastier to go to the supermarket and buy some real Greek yogurt and some ripe fruit? Effort? None. Cost? Negligible. Pleasure? Immeasurable.

Yeah, you do you mate.
Some of us go on holiday to relax, not to spend time and effort on sourcing ingredients to make our own breakfasts.

[davefl]

AndrewT wrote:

Are we trying to set a new record for the number of posts totally unrelated to the thread title? (and yes I know this is another one)

Suffered a US HIX breakfast this morning, complete with paper plates and plastic cutlery. Pretty dire.

Ah yes, the pleasures of the plastic knife that bends when you try and spread the butter that’s rock solid from the fridge or bowl of ice water, and the plastic fork tines that crumple when you try and spear a sausage.

I do like the HIXs in the US but the brand standard breakfast with watery OJ from the machine are dire. I don’t even like their famous cinamon rolls.

[AndrewT]

They don’t make up for the rest, but the pancake machines are good.

[Aston100]

AndrewT wrote:

They don’t make up for the rest, but the pancake machines are good.

Do we have the worst HIX in this country?
I recall one in Amsterdam and another in Malta had the pancake machine and a few additional items not available in the UK

[AndrewT]

Can’t say I’ve covered a particularly wide range, but all the UK ones I’ve visited recently have been pretty much by the book.

I agree the HIX in St Julian’s is better than most, although (even more off topic) I’ve now transferred my allegiance to the BE.Hotel across the road which is much better all round. Superb breakfast and rooftop pool.