Embassy Suites Gets a "Suite" New Mod Look

Longtime Embassy Suites loyalists will be happy to hear that the brand is getting a new look in some of its hotels. At the new Embassy Suites in the Jackson, Mississippi, location (the first in the state), guests will experience a "hip casual" decor throughout from the guest rooms to the Flying Spoons cafe where guests can order a light snack, a full gourmet meal or grab a fancy latte on the go.

Judging from the pictures, we're pleased to see the use of dark woods and eye-popping colors like red and orange. Although we do have some reservations about the carpeting.

But we can live with that because look at that desk set-up—it's a full-sized desk where you can take meetings and review your TPS reports, but it's also within an arm's reach of the bar. Or at least we hope that's a bar behind it. Either way, you can make an old-fashioned neat Don Draper-style easy-peasy here.

Just a note: This prototype is one of the design options offered to developers of new Embassy Suites, so this doesn't necessarily mean that all new Embassy Suites are going to look like this in the future—but we sure hope so.

Another Day, Another New Hotel-Booking Website
We are in a recession, hotel rooms can be snapped up for pretty cheap all over the place, and now you are presented with yet another booking tool to find and book said cheap rooms: the aptly named CheapOStay.com, from the folks that brought you CheapOair.com.

You can search hotels by name, city, airport, or landmark (not much new here), and apparently their "CheapOpicks" will highlight specials for you—free upgrades, casino credits, free breakfasts, etc.—and right now they've got a handful of hotels on "Red Tag" sale that will knock $10 off the total price of your reservation.

Also, they're doing a launch promo offering an additional $15 off for first-time bookers on the site. But, as with a lot of other hotel-booking websites, the "average nightly rate" is prominently listed—and sometimes that's the rate you will be getting only when you stay a few nights to qualify for a multiple-night discount.

Just be sure to read the fine print: We went to book a "$27 room" at Hooters Hotel and Casino (what? why not?) in Vegas, and ended up with a total of $127.63. We had to book three nights to qualify for a 15 percent discount, got the first two nights at $24.65, the third night at $33.15, paid a total of $55.18 in taxes and such, and after the $10.00 "Red Tag" discount we arrived at our total. All in all, not a bad deal—but our minds are not blown.

We checked out the site and found it pretty easy to navigate and search through, though it looks like there are still a couple of bugs (the San Francisco landing page took us to a blank page with some rogue HTML code floating around).

Deal Delivery: $99 Rooms at The Blackstone Chicago
We thought we knew all of the hotels in Chicago, but apparently we didn't spend enough time indulging The Untouchables fantasies in the South Loop, as The Blackstone has just hit upon our radar because of their $99 room deal.

Aptly named the "Stay In the Black" deal, The Blackstone will have $99 rooms available through April 30 in celebration of their 99th Anniversary. Since their grand opening way back in 1910, when they threw a "splash and a society gala honoring opera legend Enrico Caruso," The Blackstone has played host to luminaries as well as served as a set for movies like My Best Friend's Wedding and The Color of Money, and, yes, The Untouchables.

If you're heading to Chi-town this spring and are tempted by the deal, it's worth noting that the hotel only looks its age on the outside; inside, she's just come through a $128 million renovation, complete with technology updates like iHomes and internet and design touches like peekaboo glass showers. Next time we drop into Chicago, no matter where we're staying, we'll definitely be swinging by The Blackstone's "English Room"—a former library transplanted from a 17th-century castle. Take that, The Drake!