As an Inner Circle elite with Kimpton Hotels, you’re entitled to a Welcome Amenity upon arrival at your hotel.
I’ve had a lot of great welcome amenities with Kimpton – bottles of wine, champagne, chips/salsa, pastries, vegetables and dip…all sorts of goodies!
On the Kimpton website, you’re allowed to specify your requests for your favorite food and drink choices.
Upon arrival, the hotel will usually have the amenity waiting in your room, though sometimes they try to coordinate with you in advance, like they did on my last stay at the Cypress Hotel in Cupertino, CA. At this property, they were kind enough to email me prior to arriving since the amenity they had planned for me needed to be kept at a certain temperature.
At the Cypress, I was welcome with a bottle of sparking wine and nice warm bread pudding, which was sent up to my room at my request.
In addition, I was also given 2 bottles of water for my stay, which are always useful in California with it being so warm.
I’ve had a lot of other great welcome amenities at various other properties, which I thought I would picture a sampling of below.
I think Kimpton puts a lot of thought into these amenities, since they are never “cookie cutter” in their approach. I find each hotel puts their own unique spin on the amenity, and sometimes even deviates from the request – but not so far as to disappoint the guest. They really try hard, and this is one of the many reasons I consistently renew my Inner Circle status year after year. To get a free night at any Kimpton or IHG property worldwide, get the IHG Rewards credit card!
Jamie Larounis is an avid traveler, blogger and miles/points educator. Traveling well over 100,000 miles a year and staying in hotels for over 100 nights, he leverages miles, points and other deals to fly in first class cabins, and stay in 5-star hotels. The Forward Cabin shares his experiences, musings, reviews, tips, tricks, resources and industry news with you, the fellow traveler.
I wanted to chime in here and say that sometimes, the hotel will provide a smaller welcome amenity (i.e. Not a full-fledged amenity like the ones pictured) to non-Inner Circle members. I am about as far from Kimpton’s Inner Circle as you can get, but I am staying in the Pittsburgh Hotel Monaco now and received a handwritten welcome note, two bottles of water, a bottle of Coca-Cola, and a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels and popcorn from the Pittsburgh Popcorn Company. This is more of an example of good customer service, but I figured it’d be worth mentioning.