What does it take to achieve the very highest level of free perks that a hotel chain can offer?

“The sharing economy is here!” we are frequently advised. “We must devise a new labor deal for a new century!” we are warned. So why is making a deal between Airbnb and unions so fucking hard?

PROBLEM: There are so many millennials today, but they can’t afford to stay in your company’s nice hotels. SOLUTION: Build shittier motels—for millennials.

If you happen to be in Charleston, S.C. today, please make sure you do NOT take a picture that includes both the Marriott Courtyard Charleston Historic District hotel and the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in the same frame, because this is against the rules and you will be censured on Twitter.

Hotels: they’re full now. More full than ever. What is it about hotels that is making them so full now?

Trendsetting neighborhood Williamsburg, Brooklyn will soon have more than half a dozen new hotels, including one with a 30-seat lounge inside a rooftop water tower, “Which might sound like some inspired repurposing, but this is new construction — they’re building a new water tower for the watering hole.”

It’s a real shame that the Ninawa International Hotel is owned and operated by an army of blood-lustful zealots who will dismember you for smoking a cigarette, because look at this God damn fountain!

When New York City's Department of Homeless Services was temporarily without beds for a group of local homeless people this month, it did a pretty cool thing: booked 100 rooms at a Radisson in Jamaica, Queens and told the hotel's management they were for a "government group."

Few things capture the grandness and blandness of modern day Manhattan better than the unveiling of the "World's tallest Holiday Inn."

Here is something that was made to get people on the internet mad: a hidden camera video of a hotel housekeeper looking through a guy's stuff while she was cleaning his room. "Shocking" is how various places have described the video, but is it really? And more importantly: who really cares if this happens?

A new campaign launched by the hotel chain Marriott—a company that reported $13 billion in revenue last year—encourages customers to leave a tip for the maids who clean hotel rooms. What could possibly be objectionable about that?

In ancient times, "The Bowery" was a synonym for New York City's seedy, seething underworld. Today, the final remnants of Bowery poverty are, like any good metaphor, moving to Brooklyn and being replaced by a boutique hotel.

The L.A. coroner's office has ruled the death of a woman found in a hotel cistern as an accidental drowning with "other significant conditions, being bipolar disorder." The Toronto Sun reports authorities didn't explain how Elisa Lam got into the tank, from which guests drew water for days before she was found.

The New York Hilton Midtown, the largest hotel in New York City, is discontinuing room service, and industry experts say that other hotels will probably follow suit.

Peggy Noonan, a woman, of America, is a political columnist, yes. But first, she is an American. She does not go in for all the "data" and "numbers" and "relevant facts" mumbo-jumbo that clouds the political debates of our fine nation. Leave the "worthwhile" political theories for Nate Silver and other dewy younglings; Peggy Noonan will weave her own columns not out of "polls," but out of hazy, gin-soaked memories of Ronald Reagan, and trips to Brooklyn street fairs, and yard signs viewed out of her car window. And now: Peggy Noonan has taken a trip to a hotel. A hotel—in America.

When a maintenance worker at L.A.'s Cecil Hotel opened the hotel's rooftop water tank to investigate low water pressure, he found something unexpected: a dead body. Investigators believe the remains of Elisa Lam had been inside the tank since January 31, when the 21-year-old was last seen. As police work to determine if her death was the result of foul play or "a very, very strange accident," the LA County Department of Public Health is investigating a more urgent matter: the potentially contaminated water, which hotel residents had, for several weeks, used to bathe in and brush their teeth.

The director of the one of the world's top universities, the Institute of Political Studies in Paris (known popularly and in your French oral examens as Sciences Po), Richard Descoings, was found dead in a New York hotel room Tuesday afternoon. Police have opened an investigation into his death, because the circumstances surrounding it bear more than a passing resemblance to the opening scene of the Da Vinci code, which is to say, they are suspicious.

We all know that the horribly-named The Out NYC, Manhattan's soon-to-open gay hotel, is definitely going to be embarrassing and that it will probably be very sexxxy. Well, now we have confirmation that it's going to be dirty. Not only are they going to have a hot, young, all-male staff, but they're going to set up single guests together and offer discount rooms for hot guys.

You all knew that a gay hotel was coming to Manhattan and now we get a first glimpse of what the The Out NYC is going to look like. It looks, well, gay. Like gayer than plucked eyebrows on an underwear model.

The Casa Monica Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida flies a big American flag out front so that people will regard it as a patriot-friendly lodging establishment. Sadly, that fluttering piece of fabric will probably disappear soon, because the hotel's new management hates American flags. Hates!