THE SUNDAY LETTER
Every hotel I score lands here first.
A letter every Sunday, from my desk in Houston. From this autumn it carries the WTD Standard: luxury hotels read for how they treat a woman on her own, with the verdict and the accessibility facts, published to this list 48 hours before they appear anywhere else. Read a piece of a real one below before you decide.
WHAT ARRIVES ON SUNDAY
Four parts, every week, in the same order.
The card
A hotel read against the WTD Standard, with the verdict, before it publishes anywhere else. Until the first cards land on 27 September, one hotel I'd actually send a friend to, and why.
A note from the table
Set for one. This is the part that started the whole thing.
One thing to carry
A specific, usable thing. What to ask for, what to say, what to book differently.
One invitation
One only, and always the same one, so you never have to wonder what it is.
FROM THE LETTER OF AUG. 30
This is what is sounds like.
The last Sunday of August, and Houston is still doing the thing where the evening feels hotter than the afternoon. I've had the calendar open all week, because there's a lot landing in the next fourteen days.
Here's what it looks like when a booking is looked after properly. Before one of my stays at The Beekman in New York, the hotel wrote to me first, without being asked. The line in the email was that they'd VIP'd the reservation and upgraded me to their King Premium room. I hadn't requested a thing. Somebody there had looked at the booking, seen where it came from, and made a decision about my room before I ever walked through the door.
I won't tell you that happens every time, because it doesn't, and I keep a record of which properties do nothing at all. What I can tell you is that it never happens when your reservation arrives with nothing attached to it.
A note from the table, set for one. Booking your own trip is a skill, and I don't think a woman should hand it over just because somebody offered to take it off her. The part worth handing over is everything that happens after you press the button, when somebody has to ring the hotel and ask for a room on the quiet side of the building, or find out whether the restaurant will seat one person at the counter and mean it. Do the part you love, and give away the part that's only phone calls.
One thing to carry this week. Whoever books your next hotel, ask for the room by where it sits, not by what it's called. The floor, the side of the building, away from the lift and the ice machine. The category is what you paid for. Where it sits is what you'll remember, and asking costs nothing.
With taste, and from a desk in Houston,
Kayla