What Do You Get When You Cross a Youth Hostel with a W Hotel?

This place. Very simple, very cool. A block from the ocean in South Beach. With windows that actually open!

In a shameless, "we strive to be hip" way, they also offer the hotel as a production location.


My colleagues are very picky when it comes to sleep comfort, however, so we will unfortunately not be using this place again. They were not enamored of the stylish and firm platform beds nor did they enjoy the invigorating din of late-night revelers and traffic on the street below.

Back to the damn Hampton Inn.

It's a Quarter to Noon, You're Drunk in Your Room

Monkeys swinging from the chandelier in the hotel's crest suggest playfulness, I guess. But announcing that your new hotel represents "a new paradigm in luxury hotels" is a bit of a stretch, not to mention a worn cliché. I suppose if there are actually giant hand mirrors in the rooms and the keys are a foot in length and the ocean is just behind the curtain, that would be a new paradigm in luxury hotels, and playful. But a visit to the hotel's website shows your basic luxury rooms, and only as artist's renderings.

I do like the surreal Dalí meets Alice in Wonderland style, which is carried through on the website. (The model sprawled on the floor is getting a little overplayed these days.) But the creators of this ad didn't go with the standard luxury hotel ad style. They avoided the tired and overused white-gloved doorman opening the limo door, or the beautiful couple sharing a pre-sex drink in the darkened, trendy cocktail lounge. And there's always the cougar and her boy toy lounging by the pool approach. This ad just keeps it all vague and mysterious and the viewer is left intrigued.

The book in the lower left reads "Soft Like Silk, Sexy Lace Stockings, Sleepy Little Sigh." Continuing with the SLS theme, the website's tagline is "Something Lovely's Starting." It's pretty typical stuff; a celebrity chef, renowned designers, places to eat and drink. But the playful copy along with the vague and surreal photography represent a fairly fresh approach when there are no "paradigms" left in luxury hotel advertising.

Peace Between Enemies

No, not Hillary and Obama. Fans of Ohio State and Michigan, or USC and UCLA find reasons not to hate each other in this spot for Sheraton Hotels and Resorts (in a tie-in to the upcoming NCAA Basketball Finals). It's nice to see a hotel ad that isn't catering to the clichéd lonely business traveler in need of wireless Internet or the happy vacationing family frolicking in the pool.



The final scene is a little much, as I'm sure the Syracuse fan wiping ranch dressing from the Georgetown fan's mouth would result in a beat down even if they were rooting for the same team. Maybe that slightly gay moment was left in to compensate for the homophobic umbrella scene between the UNC guy and the Duke fan.