y whirlwind swing through the West
last week took me to three cities in four days. I stayed at fine
hotels: the Park Hyatt in Los Angeles, the Bellagio in Las Vegas
and the Monaco in San Francisco.
But if you compare them on the basis of how easy it was to hook
up my computer to get e-mail, the Monaco won hands down.
In order to get connected, I need two things, a telephone jack
and a power outlet. Ideally, the two should be readily accessible.
The best setup I've seen so far puts the jack and the outlet in the
desk lamp, eliminating the need to find them somewhere on the
floor.
None of the hotels I visited last week had this amenity. At the
Park Hyatt, the desk telephone had a dataport, a feature that all
but a few hotel phones have, but no power outlet was available
under the desk without disconnecting something, and reaching the
outlet meant crawling on your knees, something I don't do too well
these days.
The alternative was a jack and an outlet near the bed, a setup
that worked but required me to use the bed as my office.
At the Bellagio, things were a bit better. Because the hotel was
fresh out of ordinary rooms, if you can call a room at the Bellagio
ordinary, I was upgraded to a suite at no extra charge. The desk
phone in the living room had the dataport and there was an outlet
just under the desk that could be reached with a little bending
rather than an on-your-knees crawl.
At San Francisco's Monaco, I found the least stressful
arrangement. The desk in the living room of the junior suite had
the dataport-equipped phone and the power outlet in the wall could
be easily reached from a sitting position at the desk chair without
bending or crawling.
A word to hoteliers: if you want those of us of a certain age to
select your properties repeatedly, put the telephone jack and the
power outlet together on the desk and we'll be happy.