U.S. News & World Report’s Post

Transcript

Everybody it's your hospitality friend Glenn here it is back to school time I'm talking about colleges and universities Me, I got two kids back to school right now I got twins one is overseas on a semester of road and the other is back at his college. Well one of the places that I'm always thinking about is where am I going to stay when I visit these and now I've got some serious recruits because I don't think anything's best college town hotels is brought to us by U.S. news and World Report is. There, my kids are going. So we're gonna get to the bottom of this. I got Rachel Wood with me and she's the senior editor, travel at U.S. news and World Report. First of all, Rachel, jealous your job and great to see you. Great to see you. Thanks for having me today. For sure. I love that you guys are focused on best college town hotels. So what makes for the ultimate best college town hotel? Yes. So for this list, we went through our best hotel rankings as well as best college rankings. And then we also took a look at traveler reviews. And real customer experiences to really select the best hotels. And another thing that we looked at is one thing that's really key. And of course, as you know, as a parent moving into colleges, location, location, location. So we did try to include a variety of price points in this list as well. And then we also have throughout the article, you'll see links within the market. So in the event that this hotel is sold out, you could find another great top rated hotel as well. Excellent. I always try to balance proximity with the pricing. A bit, you know, we just we just did a little thing where my wife for one of the kids back home and we got a good deal. So she stayed like right by the campus, which was a really nice because you wanna be there. Especially I think my strategy is earlier in their career college, the closer you need to be and then maybe should be farther away as they get more comfortable and confident. So now that we know what makes up the best college hotels, what are some of the ones on your list and what attributes do they had? That you that you guys applauded. Yes, so a couple of them on the list that really stood out. One of them is the Hanover Inn in Dartmouth. It's right next to campus. It's got a great location. A lot of the reviews actually say that they actually made a mini vacation out of drop off for parent weekend. So that's a fun addition of Congrats to our friends over at our Pyramid Hospitality. Who is managing that particular property. Go on, Rachel. Yeah, And then we have the Statler Hotel at Cornell University is a great property. It's actually part of the of the university and actually the students, it's run by the the universities hospitality program. So it's a great way to stay by the in the campus and also support the university students as they're learning. And it's a a very five. It's a wonderful establishment too. So before you tell us about some more, I'm loving that kind of model and I'm seeing it more and more where colleges are investing in properties. On their campus, it's great to have a place for guests to come to people doing business with the college and to hold meetings at those hotels. Rachel, you're seeing an uptick in this trend too. Yes, we are seeing an uptick in that trend as well. One of the places, the Graduate hotels and the study hotels, we're really seeing a trend in those. There's lots of increases in those opening and it's a great way to just be part of the university feel and really create that synergy between the campus, the students and the people visiting as well. But yeah, I think that's that is absolutely fantastic. Ohh, Renaissance Providence downtown. I have stayed at that particular property and actually the guests of the the yeah, Graduate Hotel there's as well. So that's pretty cool. That made the the list. So OHH, the graduate Evanston, Evanston, IL made the made the list. I love that and the aloft Harlem in New York City and these hotels represented by a great companies like Ambridge Hospitality, Lowe's, Pacific Hotel Management, a real cross section of brands out out there. Rachel, what was your favorite part about putting this list together? I really loved hearing about all of the different the campuses because as part of my research, I actually was looking at the campuses in addition to the property. So I loved being able to research both and kind of find what the traveler reviews and our ratings, what the best places to let our readers know where they might want to consider staying when they're visiting the universities. Beautiful, I love it. And right now we got the the address scrolling. Please check it out at travel.usnews. com/features/S Dash College Dash Town Dash Hotels. But hey, why don't you just put into your favorite browser best college town motels. I'm sure that'll come up. Rachel, any final thoughts? No, just if you're planning any visits to colleges, make sure to plan ahead, especially if there's any big football games. I know the Morrison intends to sell out very far in advance the University of Notre Dame. So that's kind of just recommendations and enjoy the fall. Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for being here. And I want to thank all of you for being here. Kudos to all of you folks that help make college stays for parents and folks coming onto campus. Incredible uncle in Houseman. Subscribe to our newsletter. Text the word hotel to 66866 and. If you're watching this on YouTube, why not hit that like button? The Youtubers tell me it really helps, so let's do that. Thanks all, we'll see you later.