One of the very nice things about my job is that most of my clients are in major metropolitan areas, and usually in the downtown area. So while I don’t complain too much about a trip to Washington, DC, Boston or even Minneapolis and Orlando, every now and then a visit comes along that is one I’d rather never happened, and certainly noe that I’d hope to not repeat.
This time around the offending destination was Daytona Beach, Florida. Daytona is known for Spring Break, Bike Week and the Daytona 500. All of these events bring huge crowds to the area, many of whom are much more focused on the party side of things than the not destroying the hotel side of things. As such, most of the hotels are pretty beat up, and they don’t bother too much with repairs, as they know the same visitors are just going to come back the following year. I got pretty lucky on the hotel front – Hilton recently took over a property right on the beach and renovated and added to it, creating a bit of an oasis on the waterfront. It wasn’t perfect, but definitely better than many of the others I saw on the strip. (More on the hotel here.)
Worse than the hotel, however, were the dining options. To say that there weren’t any is not truly accurate, but there certainly weren’t any that were particularly appealing. There is a small shopping center type property at the North end of the property, but its options are Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory, Johnny Rocket’s and the World House of Jerky. Yeah…not a lot of fine dining to be found. We ended up at a BBQ place one night that wasn’t terrible, a burger joint that was slightly less appealing and then one night in the hotel due to the monsoon, and that food was terrible.
The only redeeming piece of the trip, other than the few HHonors points I earned, was the view on the last morning there. The ocean view room was a nice upgrade, but when it rained non-stop for three full days it didn’t do me all that much good. Fortunately, on the last morning there the weather cleared up and the sunrise was rather impressive. I managed to grab a couple nice photos that morning while packing up, including this one:
I’m very glad that my visit next week doesn’t include an overnight.
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