We moved from NY for my husband’s job years ago.  We are only two hours away from our families, so it has always been manageable to visit multiple times a year.  We especially love hosting large family gatherings at our home for Thanksgiving - the kinds where every room of the house is occupied with multiple people and the togetherness is joyful, soothing, chaotic, and overwhelming all at once.  Then, the pandemic hit and changed everything we had come to rely on and look forward to.  Now, if we would like to see our extended family not on a screen, we are forced to make a trip to NY to stay in a hotel and meet up with family at a local park or in another relative’s backyard.  Wrapping our heads around staying at a hotel is a feat in itself. 

The Planning

We booked a hotel that is part of a large national hotel chain at a property with which we are familiar.  We requested rooms with patios to provide us with outdoor space, but also in the hopes that only one of us will have to walk through the hotel to access the room.  We downloaded the hotel’s app, so we had access to a digital key to avoid needing to visit the front desk and we messaged the hotel through the app the day before check-in to request extra towels and no housekeeping during our stay.

The Experience

The hotel’s app included a floor plan for the hotel, so we thought we knew where our room was, but we didn’t.  My husband had to go to the front desk to figure it out.  Despite this glitch, we were able to access our room with minimal hassle.  The hotel had retrofitted the patio doors so you could use the digital key to enter the rooms via the patios, so that was a huge plus.  While we did not have extra towels in the room, the hotel messaging in the bathroom made clear that no one would be accessing our room during our stay unless we requested it.  The tv remote was encased in a plastic bag and the door to the room was sealed with a sticker to indicate no one had entered it since it had been cleaned.  While the outdoor space was referred to as a “patio,” that was a bit of an overstatement in my book.  It was more of a small deck area measuring 3 feet by 6 feet with 2 chairs and a small table, so it was a bit disappointing, but the ability to enter and exit the room through the outside door was fabulous.  We were also pleased to find a huge gazebo with patio furniture. We commandeered the gazebo for a socially distant evening with family, which was terrific.  We ordered take out from the hotel restaurant.  The food was quite good and we enjoyed a lovely family get together in the gazebo space and the adjoining lawn area. 

All in all we were quite satisfied with our first hotel experience and will plan to do it again to enjoy quality time with our extended family until we are able to safely entertain at our home once again.