Guest Post: 8 Days, 4 Four Seasons

Today I’m featuring a guest post from my traveling friends Ben & Mark of @travelingout. They write about two of my favorite things: luxury hotels & Twitter!

For some travelers, a hotel room is a means to an end: if it’s clean, safe & quiet & ensures a good rest, that’s enough.

We are not those travelers.

Like the author of this blog, we love hotels. We value great service, enjoy wonderful amenities, & appreciate fine food & wine. We make it a point to visit great hotels (or those we hope will be) on nearly every vacation.

Our most recent trip was no exception. During the last week of March, we spent eight days visiting four Four Seasons Hotels along the Northeast Corridor in the U.S. (thanks to Amtrak for the lift!). Our trip took us to Four Seasons Baltimore, Four Seasons Philadelphia, Four Seasons New York & Four Seasons Boston. Although we had visited Four Seasons New York once before, the other three hotels were new to us. [Side note: With this trip, we’ve now visited 24 Four Seasons hotels on four continents.]

Traveling Socially
We spent a good deal of time planning the trip & began tweeting about it from our @travelingout Twitter account using the hashtag #8Days4FourSeasons in the weeks before our departure. We were inspired to create the hashtag by our interest in charting the trip, engaging with the hotels directly & sharing our trip experiences with others.

During the trip, we had a great time highlighting our activities, interacting with the Four Seasons staff & sharing pictures of the properties & the places we visited in each location. It was fascinating to hear from staff in the hotels in real time that they liked a picture we posted or appreciated the shout out we gave them We were repeatedly reminded that for hotels – as with most of the travel industry – customer engagement is a prized commodity.

We had such a good time tweeting on the trip (if you’re curious, no, it did not distract from our ability to have a good time) that we decided to give out “favorites awards” to the four hotels noting our favorite elements of the trip. We picked eight categories plus an overall “all staff” award for all of the properties given the high level of service that Four Seasons is known for (& which we experienced consistently throughout the trip). We announced the winners earlier this week on Twitter.  Here’s a summary of the winners by property along with a bit more explanation than we could provide in 140 characters:

Four Seasons Baltimore

This is a beautiful, relatively new property in the Harbor East neighborhood near downtown & the Inner Harbor. If you’re thinking “Baltimore?,” don’t be put off by the city’s reputation. The hotel is stunning & compares favorably to other Four Seasons hotels in more “fashionable” cities. In fact, our favorite room of the trip was in Baltimore (although it was tough to choose just one). Its spa was our favorite of the trip as well. We were pleasantly surprised by all there is to do in Baltimore (the Walters Art Museum & the B&O Railroad Museum were two favorites). We loved the hotel & the friendly, helpful staff.

Four Seasons Philadelphia

This is one of the oldest hotels in the Four Seasons portfolio & is slated to close in the next year or so while the company builds a new hotel in the top floors of a new Comcast building a few blocks away. We had been warned not to expect much given the age of the property, but we also heard how nice the staff was & what a lovely stay others (including this blog!) had experienced at the property. It’s an older property to be sure, but for true fans of the Four Seasons experience, there is a charm abou

t the hotel that is memorable, comforting & really enjoyable. We picked the Fountain Restaurant as our favorite of the trip (our waiter had more than 20 years of experience in the hotel & we had delightful conversations with him & with the very talented sommelier). The hotel’s staff works hard & their expertise in steering us to cultural offerings in the neighborhood – the new Barnes Museum & the amazing Philadelphia Museum of Art – really enhanced our stay (so much that we picked the hotel as our favorite for “cultural sights”).

Four Seasons New York

Wow, where to start? This beautiful hotel is an architectural masterpiece (it was designed by I.M. Pei) in an enviable position in midtown Manhattan. The view of Central Park from our room was so stunning that we had no choice but to award this hotel with our “favorite view” award. The gracious & amazing welcome we received (including an introduction to the Hotel Manager & a personal escort to our room from the Director of Guest Relations) was among the best of any Four Seasons visit ever. Given its location, a stay here is expensive, but it was worth it in every sense of the word. We’d stay here again in a heartbeat. (side note: Christina considers the Four Seasons New York her favorite property – clearly we share good taste!)

Four Seasons Boston

As the last stop on our tour, this hotel had a lot to prove. But given the warmth of the staff & the overall excellence of this property, our expectations were exceeded. The hotel is situated across the street from the Public Garden & is within walking distance of the Theater District, Copley Square & Newbury Street. It doesn’t get any better in the city! The property has been thoughtfully renovated in a way that preserves the heritage & character of Four Seasons while also being updated & new. We found the pool so beautiful (with its floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city) that we awarded it “favorite pool” of our trip. The bar/restaurant – the Bristol Lounge – was top notch, earning our “favorite bar” award for the trip. We’d make a return trip to Boston just to visit this hotel.

We learned so much on this trip – the power of social media, the value of recognition & the importance of truly enjoying all that a property (not to mention a city) has to offer. Yes, you get what you pay for, but wonderful experiences like this are priceless. The enjoyment we experienced from this trip will be with us for a long time.

As for our love of hotels? Well, perhaps now you understand a bit more why we value hotels as more than just a place to sleep.

Mark Pimble (26 yrs in travel industry) & Ben Finzel were recently married & are now traveling out together. Next trips include stops in Brussels, Bruges, Los Angeles & London.