I spent a night at the Hotel Albuquerque, which was the host hotel of the Route 66 Festival. Based on what I saw and heard, I have advice for future hotel hosts of Route 66 festivals:
- If you have to shut down an elevator for cosmetic remodeling, please do it at a time when dozens of people aren't trying to get their luggage and themselves up to the 10th floor. Creating a long line of people trying to use the sole remaining elevator doesn't leave a good impression.
- Please make sure you have washcloths and operational exhaust fans in the bathrooms.
- Please ensure that you air-condition the common hallways, especially in desert regions.
- Please don't charge 50 cents for each local phone call. That's bush league, especially when rooms are $100 a night when taxes and fees are added.
- Please don't renege on the exhibition site for the authors and artists because of a doggone wedding, especially when you knew months in advance where the exhibition would be.
- Please don't charge the event organizer hundreds of dollars for the simple feat of turning on additional track lighting in the exhibition room.
- If you tout the fact you have wi-fi, please make sure it works in all areas of the hotel complex. One exhibitor from Sweden couldn't even connect to the Internet, even though he was in the same ballroom as me.
- Please don't charge $14 a person (which was a discounted rate) for a group breakfast and expect satisfaction by serving a few muffins and pastries, a little fruit, snack-size yogurt and orange juice — especially when a restaurant down the street was having a special on $2 breakfasts.
- Ultimately, please make sure your rooms and amenities justify the higher price for rooms, or attendees will instead go for the nearby, lower-cost, mom-and-pop motels — like we did.
The Monterrey Non-Smokers Motel — along with at least four other motels along Central Avenue — offered free wi-fi, free local calls and all the stuff we needed in the bathrooms for at least $40 less per night. We stayed there one night earlier in the week, then returned again later because we were more satisfied there than the host hotel.
(I'll have more thoughts about the festival and what we saw on Route 66
after I get some sleep.)