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Take a classic early 1960’s roadside motel, give it a spiffy makeover and a swift kick into the 21st century and you’ve got the kitschy Quail Park Lodge in Kanab, UT.

Although Kanab is a great overnight escape from Las Vegas, outdoor enthusiasts from all over the world dig this destination as a centrally-located home base for exploring Zion National Park, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Coral Pink Sand Dunes, and Grand Staircase Escalante.

And at Quail Park Lodge, there’s a whole lotta “new” goin’ on, including a new swimming pool, LCD TV’s, free Wi-Fi, microwaves, mini-fridges, and comfy beds — and the Internet-savvy property is also wheeling and dealing reduced room rates on its

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In an ideal, globally-connected world, all hotels would have free and fast WiFi. This is however not a perfect world, and so traveling across borders with the intention of checking your email or uploading pictures to your Flickr is often a bigger headache that it should be.

Our most recent instance of entering Hotel WiFi Hell occurred during our 3-night stay at the centrally-located and business traveler-happy Marriott Berlin. After enjoying free and freeflowing access at a much cheaper hotel elsewhere in the city for our first few days in Berlin, we were admittedly spoiled. Nonetheless, we found the internet plan at the Marriott too exorbitant for any visitor:

· One hour of access (common

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We typically wait until the last minute to book our hotel rooms. Call it poor planning, a genetic pre-disposition, procrastination or absent-mindedness, but that’s just what we do. So last Tuesday, we were surfing around Hotwire to find a hotel room in New York for the following night.

We took a chance on the site’s blind booking process–otherwise known as hotel roulette–and after doing extensive research on BetterBidding.com, we were confident that our four-star hotel in downtown was Gild Hall. And we were right. Even though we could have booked online at the Thompson Hotels website for about $10 more, it was more fun to do the Hotwire thing.

Except when we arrived at

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Yes, yes, we know: here comes another loyalty program bonus offer that promises to lure you out of the safe confines of your apartment or house and into a hotel bed. Well, many hotel beds — for multiple nights, all summer long — yada yada.

Here’s another: members of Carlson Hotels’ goldpoints plus (and yes, it is with great hesitance that we comply with the non-capitalization thing here) loyalty program to earn bonus points by staying at any of Carlson’s hotel brands — that’s Regent, Radisson, Park Plaza, Country Inn and Park Inn — for three or more nights between June 1 and August 31. And no, the nights don’t have to be consecutive.

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Last week Shira Levine spent a few days getting her Turkish Delight on in Istanbul, Turkiye (“Turkey is a bird; Turkiye is the country”) and checking out the transcontinental Eurasian city’s hotel scene. Any questions about where to stay in Turkiye? Send ‘em to us and we’ll have Shira answer them for you.

To experience a city like Istanbul, where a lone bridge in the Bosphorus connects Europe to Asia; or where Islam intersects with Christianity and Judaism; and the ancient world juxtaposes a more noveau way of life, it makes total sense that President Barack Obama chose this complicated city as his first to visit.

This week while we recover from slinging back

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By most accounts, the Tides South Beach is pretty much the stuff hotel fantasies are made of. And if you’ve ever dreamed of waking up in a Tides suite, turns out this crushing recession is as good a time as ever. Suites are half off!

Yes, you read that correctly: The Tides’ “Sensual Suites, Stylish Treats” package grants you 50 percent off top suites, including the Amber, Coral, and Tides suites. Of course, if you know anything about the Tides, you know even half the cost isn’t exactly a bargain. The Amber suite’s rates reduce from $1,500 to $750 per night. With taxes, that translates to an awfully pricey rate of $847.50 per night. And that’s

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Dream SoBe, in February 2009.

‘Twas when we were in Miami earlier this year when we first heard news of Vikram Chatwal’s plan to take his Dream Hotel to South Beach — in fact, we drove past the hotel itself, which is going to be the result of renovations of the Tudor and Palmer House buildings on Collins Avenue, and it was under some pretty serious construction. But that was in February — and no opening date was in sight.

But we did a little checkup on the VC Hotels website today and noticed a sweet little “Labor Day 2009″ next to the hotel; can it be? But where we assume its website