Thursday, January 10, 2013

Certainly, sir!



I was looking up hotels in Boston because…oh, yeah—I decided to make the daughter of one of the minor characters in my novel work for a while at a Boston hotel.

Then I got to wondering if I could remember the name of the hotel where a Boston native once told me all the high-class hookers worked. It was Copley something—not the Marriott, because I’ve stayed there and, well, I just know that whatever it was that was the name of this hotel that was supposed to be Very Old Boston, it wasn’t where I was staying.

But the short end of this story is that, having trawled around various four- and five-star Boston hotel sites, I hit on that of the Copley Square Hotel. Not that I’m saying it was the one in whose lobby the high-class hookers might or might not have plied their trade, but because it appears to be a high-end hotel where my minor character’s daughter might have spent a couple of years working. (Remember? Back in paragraph one?)

I mean—it’s A Boston Boutique Hotel at its Best, right? Why not?

So I was rooting around the site and came across the amenities page. Where I just stopped dead in my trawling tracks.


It wasn’t just the free Wi-Fi (usually you only get free Internet at the low-end hotels), or the free local/800 calls and postage. Nor was it the complimentary seasonal afternoon beverages (would that be lemonade in the summer or G&T?), or even the overnight shoe shine.

(I do wonder at the “Wine Down Hour”—what does that even mean? And it seems a little on the parsimonious side to have it only for one hour and only at a time before a lot of their presumptive business travelers get out of work.)

No—it’s the “Intuition Specialist services”.

Seriously?

Now, I’m just spitballing here, based on what I get from an Internet search on “intuition specialist”; but I’m finding it hard to feature your average guest at a New England hotel calling down to Reception to book an appointment with an intuitionist. “Listen, I need my auras read ASAP”, or “I have a bad feeling about tomorrow’s business meeting—get me your psychic, please.”

I could see something like that at a hotel in LA, or pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area. But finding it at this establishment just cracked me up.

Although, looking back at it, I note that here’s one of the three photos they use on the amenities page:


No—actually, you don’t need any intuition specialist to know what’s going on there, do you?



1 comment:

  1. I think that photo seals the deal on which hotel was referred to 20 years ago. If you are looking for hotels that might allow for interesting plot points:

    1. a hotel that used to be a county jail

    2. a hotel that you can get to via water taxi from the airport

    3. a hotel on the waterfront near several well known tourist destinations

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