Welcome to Travel Splurges. Here we chronicle the services we paid a little extra for while traveling. Were they worth it? Keep reading to find out!
Not all, but quite a few hotel brands offer a special “Club Level” room category. You'll find these amongst luxury brands like Ritz-Carlton (Ritz-Carlton Club Level) and Fairmont Hotels (Fairmont Gold) but also amongst less splashy places like Sheraton Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts and Hyatt Hotels. Several independent hotels scattered here and there have their own club floors, such as the Eau Palm Beach in Florida, shown above.
READ OUR REVIEW OF THE EAU PALM BEACH HERE.
For what it's worth, our favorite club level floor was the Conrad St. James in London. The lounge is huge and offers showers! Which is a big perk for travelers coming in from the U.S. Go HERE for our mini-review.
Typically, the guest rooms on these floors cost more than regular guest rooms but they offer guests a dedicated lounge within the hotel to hang out, get snacks, and grab drinks. And that's at no extra charge. Well, other than the $50-$100 they charge per night for the room.
We opted for a Club Level suite at the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua last summer where kids 12 and under are included in the lounge at no extra cost. Here, we had breakfast, snacks and treats and overall, a more contained place to keep the kids while scarfing down some sustenance as opposed to the larger restaurants down stairs where the kids could and would wander off.
WAS IT WORTH IT? Hmm. This is a tough call because we had booked a suite at the hotel which came with its own kitchen and if we had planned properly we could have stocked that kitchen with snacks and drinks. But it was a last-minute stay and we didn't stop at the grocery store before checking in. That said, since our kids are all under 12 so it was easy to enter the lounge and let them graze the buffet-style offerings.
But often times at large resorts like this one and with several kids in tow, having a lounge that doles out snacks and mini-meals (plus drinks!) ends up saving you some serious money.
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