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Ben Towle on US Grant Renovation Delays and Rooms at CCI
posted May 15, 2005
 

Ben Towle
Via the Internet

As mentioned on your blog today, the venerable US Grant Hotel's renovations will apparently not be completed in time for the Comicon this year. Regarding your remark at the conclusion of your entry, "...one hopes that special consideration is given to people who signed up in good faith through CCI's service when they could have pursued rooms in other ways," I can say -- as someone who booked a room at The Grant via the CCI service -- that my experience has been somewhat mixed in that regard.

I did receive a call from Travel Planners (the service that CCI uses for plane/hotel bookings) telling me that my reservation was canceled and that I would be relocated to, I believe, the Holiday Inn on the Bay. I quickly googled the hotel and found that, according to its website, it is nearly two miles from the convention center, as opposed to eight blocks for The Grant -- and two miles away from downtown, the Gaslamp District, etc. The Travel Planers person assured me that the information on the hotel's website was wrong and supposedly booked me a room, confirmation for which I never received.

A few minutes on Mapquest verified that the hotel in question was in fact exactly as far from the convention center as it claimed to be so I called Travel Planers back, and after going up the call center chain of command a bit -- I managed to get a room at the Sheraton downtown, which is still significantly farther than the Grant, but at least not out in the sticks like the original place.

The point of my rambling is you might advise any of your regular readers who who had initially been booked at The Grant that (a) any claims by Travel Planers about this Holiday Inn on the Bay should be evaluated skeptically, and that (b) it appears to be possible to improve one's lot at least slightly with some gentle but tactful prodding of the Travel Planners folks.

P.S. - The cheapest, coldest beer in downtown (at least in my experience) can be found in the downstairs bar of the Pickwick Hotel on Broadway. Its main clientele appear to be bag ladies and drunken Charles Bukowski-types, but it's dark, cool and comfortable: exactly the respite one needs from the Comicon.