Top/Bottom 3 overnight location/hotel
 

There hasn’t been much activity in this forum lately so why not chaff it up with a topic everyone has an opinion on: overnights. What are your top 3 and bottom 3 overnight locations and hotels?

I’ve been here less than 2 years and in that time there has been a MAX grounding and a pandemic. I’ve also taken about 6 months of ETOs. In other words, I don’t have near the knowledge or experience that most of you probably have when it comes to good and bad deals. In my estimation, I’ve had an overnight at maybe 30% of our possible locations, so my list will probably look different than everyone else’s.

Top 3
1. Milwaukee Hilton - Great location, great hotel bar to pre-game, and maybe the best wings I’ve ever had. Tons to do downtown.
2. St Louis Ballpark Hilton - The 360 Lounge or whatever they call the rooftop bar is probably the best hotel bar I’ve been to at a non-casino hotel. Lots to do in the area, especially if the Cards are in town.
3. Nashville Indigo - Nice hotel next to Printer’s Alley and a few blocks from Broadway. Tough to beat.

Bottom 3
1. Sacramento Hilton Arden West - 30 minute van ride just to stay in the middle of an industrial park.
2. Detroit Marriott - It’s Detroit and you’re stuck at the airport (maybe that’s a good thing)
3. Portland Monarch - Hotel is dirty and old. Not much within walking distance.

The Arden West should take all three bottom slots. They somehow managed to find a hotel that's farther than the one downtown. Amazing.

Best:

CHS (Belmont), MIA, SAN

worst:

IND, CLT (Sheraton airport), AUS (Hilton airport)

Best:

CHS (Belmont), MIA, SAN

worst:

IND, CLT (Sheraton airport), AUS (Hilton airport)

Top:

SAN Wyndham Bayside - FLL B Ocean - BOS Westin Waterfront
Bottom:

​​​​​​MCI Airport Hilton - ONT DoubleTree - STL any of the airport hotels

Ahh memory lane. Great thread.

Best:
Rome ... Bernini Bristol ... bit of a drive but neat hotel in great location ... good food and drink close by.

Munchen ... Hilton Muchen City ... bit of a drive in but nice and clean great location ... great bier and food

Frankfurt am Main ... Hilton is a short drive and a great location ... many great locations for bier and eats

Dusseldorf ... Okay hotel ... naughty girls working the front desk ... so many Alts so little time and great eats

Amsterdam ... good hotel short drive ... SO many great places to eat and drink ... so much to see and do

Brussels ... great hotel ... so many great beers and places to eat

Paris ... long painful drive but ok hotel ... Great food, fromage, wine, bagets and places to enjoy them

Worst
London ... long painful drive ... hotel hit or miss ... can’t understand the language ... great beer though

Tokyo ...long drive to the Intercontinental... great food and beer

Beijing ... Great free eats and drinks at the JW Marriot ... but it is Beijing

Singapore ... great hotel with free eats and drinks ... plenty to see but it is humid

The down side to all of this flying is that none of it was on the 737 ... :D

If you're willing to venture out in DTW go to the Henry Ford museum. It's only a 10 or 15 minute Uber away and is absolutely amazing. Filled with every imaginable type of machine, car, locomotive, and even some airplanes. You could easily kill a whole day there.


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Within walking distance is The Old Spaghetti factory, Gustav's Pub & Grill (a German Restaurant), Olive Garden, and Claim Jumper. For fast food there is Chick-fil-A and McDonalds. For shopping there is Target and the Mall. As for exercise there is a long running/walking path and a gym. I would much rather overnight here than DTW, SAT, MCI (Marriott), or JAN.

To be fair, the list for the bottom needs to be more than 3 and that is not counting getting to a layover and they do not have a hotel for you . Make matters worse the hotel desk is to busy to answer the phone or just get a blowoff from them .


Do not forget your own hotel committee said you’re at work to work, your not on vacation or to have a good time .

Top 3: SAN Harbor Island, SAT Riverfront, BOS Westin.
Honorable mention from May-October: OMA. Love the Marriott there. Also MKE Hilton.


Bottom 3: SMF Arden Worst. MKE Radisson (do we even still stay there? Haven't touched a 73 since last april). OAK Hilton.

I feel like we can have a "Hotel is old and needs to be replaced" category and a "Hotel is located someone between mars and jupiter" category.

Best: CHS, MKE, SLC (haven’t done MIA or any Hawaii stuff yet)

Worst: PDX, SMF Arden, MSP

Wow, no maf or elp yet?

I tend to bid based on where I can go for a run and the weather for the time of year. Then food off campus and things to do other than be in a hotel room.
best- SAN, MKE downtown, anything west coast.
Worst- IND airport hotel by the gas station( my first overnight at SW) STL not ballpark. CVG by the airport- literally nothing around but 20+ hrs to explore it.
I dont know why guys harp on the Monarch? Sure the rooms are old AF but good running and eating outside of hotel and inside hotel some of the best staff.
Honorable mention for worst is the SMF Arden west. Seriously why? I can run along the river and go to the pink taco hut but still literally in the middle of nowhere.

Monarch has Mirror Pond on tap. And it's far away from the stinky hippies. MSP shabby also but usually you can get walleye in the restaurant. SMF Ardent worst... Hate that place. Ocean B FLL sucks. Hate that place too. Best? My porch. Beer fridge. Squirrels to yell at. No stinky hippies.

I don't mind the Monarch. It's dated, for sure, but the people there are great, there's a gym on the corner, and the brewery in the shopping center is pretty damn good. Running trails are great. It does take a while to get to, but I don't have any complaints about it otherwise. You can also hop public transit easily if you want to go bang drums with the weirdos in downtown.

Okay
Worst:
MAF Elegante
ELP Wyndham
SMF Arden West
LBB Hotel is great, town sucks.
RSW Crowne Plaza (roaches).
TPA DoubleTree Westshore ^^^^see RSW Crowne

Best:
MSY Marriott Downtown
BOS Westin
CHS Belmond
SAN Sheraton or any overnight Hotel along the water there.

Don't tell me any of you like staying at hotels, right!? Besides crappy pay, the constant hotel stays are my least favorite part of the job. There's nothing I'd rather do than sleep in my own bed and in my own environment. It's not like the hotels like us being there. They treat us terribly compared to other paying guests, even if they don't make it that obvious.

Don't forget the company isn't putting you at places where they think you'll have a good time or like the breakfast. All of this stuff is negotiated and we lose out on higher pay rates when people beg for classier hotels.

People seem to either love or hate the Monarch. Personally, I’m a fan. The run around Mt Talbert is one of the best in the system. San Diego waterfront or San Antonio Riverwalk are others I look forward to.

Let me get this straight. You want to go places but you don't want to stay in hotels? You want to be in your own bed and own environment every night? My friend, I think you may have gotten into the wrong profession. Staying in hotels that are always nicer than ones I'd usually pay for out of my own pocket is one of the perks of the job, if you ask me.

I miss the LGA layover before covid. Needed to be very careful to keep from getting into too much trouble.

My favorite thing about the Arden is getting off that long a$$ van ride at the airport to leave.

San Juan is good. So is Cancun.

Hopefully we are on the way back to normal. Although it will never be as fun as it used to be before social media, the internet and PC showed up.

I’m the king of day trips my friend. I could care less about going to places. If I fly to the same 3 destinations that allows me day trips, I’m fine. I don’t view it as a perk.

i feel like a loser when I think about it

Yes, the Woke Force are alive and well, ready to report any bad behavior. I watch my back like crazy now cause you never know!

I would love to know why you think crappy hotels brings higher pay rates .

There’s still a mindset out there that benefits and perks have to come out of our pocket. The “what are you will to give for QOL” era has come to an end everywhere else and needs to here as well.

Also, Cozumel has become my all time favorite.

What they should do is give us a nightly stipend to spend on lodging. If we spend less, it’s ours. If we spend more, it comes out of our pocket. This will give people the flexibility in lodging options and the chance to pocket some extra each trip.

the airport floor would be littered with pilots sleeping in the airport. “Packing their own lodging.” I can here it now “you never know what’s gonna be available now a days.” Lol

My hotel favorites right NOW are just not California and not the northeast. I really dug the ECP Holiday inn. BOI is sweet and they have bikes. I actually like the monarch in PDX because it’s a short walk to be on a trail in the woods and the restaurant has awesome fish tacos.

That’ll be fun on a reroute with no hotels available.

That’s an absolutely horrible idea.

Agreed. The last thing I ever want to do is spend MY time at home having to book hotels for an upcoming trip. If I still wanted to do that, I’d have stayed corporate.

Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

As far as hotels, all I can say is I’ve begun bidding to avoid trips with overnights at the Arden Worst. That place needs to burn down post haste.

This is right up there with guys who've been here for years and are *****ing about having to fly 737s (fATN's get a pass on this, however). What the hell did you expect? :confused:

Sounds like Allegiant and Frontier are both starting to hire, so there's that....

Favorites:

CUN
FLL (Ocean B)
SJU
LIR (come on back already!)
SJD
SAN (not Sheraton)
RNO

Passing on these:

MCI
STL
SMF as previous posters mentioned.

Surprisingly not bad:

DTW Romulus isn't bad. Some pretty good Middle East food up there within walking distance from the hotel.
OMA Some good Japanese joints within walking distance from the hotel.
ISP (at Smokey Bones) and MIA hotel both have fantastic wings.

at a previous employer a guy convinced the company to do exactly this. He then took the money and slept in his car or anywhere but a hotel. He then showed up for work smelly, unshowered, dirty uniform often with stains and totally exhausted from not getting good sleep.
This was eneded shortly when others started to complain. Guaranteed this would happen in droves as pilots are notoriously cheap.

Now that’s taking it to the extreme. For me, I’d rather find an Airbnb with some privacy.

I actually don’t shower every day. Saves some money on the water bill.

I was about to say, sounds like someone has never flown charter... It really kills your QOL then. Enjoy the needles in the parking lots of the Ramada in Detroit....

It would be totally unrealistic to have crews book their own rooms at separate hotels all over town (when everyone would have their own standards and price point) and expect it to go smoothly on a normal day much less when there is a holiday event, IROP, etc taking place. Not to mention the nightmare of cancellation refunds and rebooking for reroutes.

The poster who mentioned that obviously does day lines and would just pocket the hotel stipend.

Then you’d also have the guys that would hangout at the airport all day and sleep in the plane at night, old school Mesa style. You could even bring your own plywood to lay across the aisle.😂

Not a bad idea! At the least the airplanes respect us and can talk to us when something isn’t right. The planes become part of us, like an old friend.

When we go to hotels, we’re treated as second-class citizens, and as if we didn’t “pay” to be there.

I thought I was done sleeping on airplanes.

Top/Bottom 3 overnight location/hotel
 

I can't believe this find your own hotel thing is actually a conversation. Fu** that $h17.

How is OAK not on more people's worst list?

SAN - Wyndham so far has been my favorite.


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I think domicile-city hotels don't get too much consideration because they're infrequent and usually associated with shorter overnights. But yeah, pretty much everything OAK is no bueno.