A Weekend Jaunt to Europe: Sheraton London Heathrow

Since I had an early morning flight to Dublin, I decided that I would stay near the airport.  Initially, I was considering rooms with roughly 100USD/night rates as I just needed a bed and a shower.

Having accumulated a large stockpile of SPG points from the Starwood Amex last summer (30k for $4.5k in 3 months), ordinary spending, and Starwood stays, I noticed that the Sheraton London Heathrow is a Category 2 hotel.  For weekend stays, Cat 2 hotels are only 3k points per night, giving me a 3.3cpp valuation for my redemption while offering the added flexibility that a prepaid, nonrefundable rate would not have had.

My main annoyance with the hotel is that they do not run their own shuttle and instead rely on the Hotel Hoppa bus service which runs a few pounds each way.  Further, since I had not picked up any cash at an ATM, I had to wait inside at the information desk to pay with a credit card.  The customer in front of me had no hotel room for the night and patiently listened to the agent sell him on all the great benefits of the London Heathrow Hilton (for roughly 160 pounds per night).  The guy agreed and stepped off to get some cash.  Rather than service me after I stated I just needed a bus ticket, he reminding me that the guy was coming back (yeah, right…).  Eventually, the other clerk told him to just take care of the line of waiting customers rather than hope that the guy would come back.

The front lobby is undergoing maintenance, so the bus drops off and picks up passengers at the back of the hotel.

When I came to the desk, I thought it was incredibly well designed to have three types of outlets.

Unfortunately, the US outlet was slightly out of spec and permitted my cables to float freely in the outlet without making electrical contact.  With my set of plug adapters, I reached a simple. albeit less than ideal solution.