Today, I’m speaking at Preferred Hotel Group‘s global sales and marketing meeting at the Montage in Beverly Hills. Since I live locally, I wasn’t going to get a room but I changed my mind at the last minute since I was invited to dinner at the nearby Magic Castle. Since the Montage was sold out, the organizers put me up a block away at the Thompson Hotel. Here are my observations and pictures.
-The Thompson Hotel is located at 9360 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles.
-The valet and bellmen were attentive.
-Valet costs $35 a night.
-Front desk crew were friendly and quick.
-My room was on the 5th floor and the hallways are dark and funky with an image of a model at the end that looks like a mannequin. It’s freaky at night.
-Rooms are average size, comfortable (especially the sheets) but the walls are thin. I can hear hallway traffic and my neighbor’s phone ring.
-Internet costs $21.95 a day, which is really steep but I have a Verizon card supplied by RovAir.com
-The hotel’s landing page is interesting (below is a screenshot) as there’s a half-naked model touting a local art exhibit. The page also features the hotel’s Facebook, Twitter, and TripAdvisor pages which is smart – except they aren’t that well ranked on the latter.
-My view is looking towards Century City and into a cool glass office building – I see the workers clearly so I wonder what they see at night. Can you say voyeurism?
-There’s no bottled water in the room although the night maid might brings it … but I wasn’t around and left the Do Not Disturb sign on my door.
-The bathroom is small, the tub is a little tired and the shower curtain rod needs to be replaced with a curved bar so the curtain doesn’t assault you in the shower. They do have nice Bigelow toiletries.
-There’s a restaurant and two bars. The coolest bar is up on the roof where they also have swanky Las Vegas-style bungalows with flat screen TVs and curtains. My buddy Chris says the curtains are for people to do cocaine. Is that true?
-The pool looked inviting but it was messy – maybe because it was the end of the day and they were cleaning up but no poolboy was visible.
-A glass of wine at the bar costs $17.
The highlight of my night was going to dinner at the Magic Castle in Hollywood with my buddy Chris McGinnis (travel legend), Mike Freed (from Post Ranch Inn and Cavallo Point), Maria C. Gemskie (Vice President, Corporate Communications Preferred Hotel Group) and Steven V. Seghers (President of HyperDisk Marketing). We were joined by Mike’s cousin J. Corey Friedman who is an AMAZING magician and a member of the club. You can’t get go unless you become a member or know one. The place is huge with all kinds of acts and nothing like what I expected. It’s a really special place but I’m sure the company I was with made it that way. On the way home, we passed LACMA’s Urban Light sculpture, by artist Chris Burden. It’s 202 antique cast-iron lampposts from various cities in and around the Los Angeles area.
This is simply exquisite. Very elegant!!!