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Henry Blodget, Business Insider
The folks who run the excellent DLD conference in Munich were kind enough to ask me to speak again this year.
2013-01-22
And they took great care of me.
They flew me over business class, put me up at a five-star hotel, and then chauffered me to Davos. That was extremely classy of them. Who doesn't love to be treated like George Clooney?
It has become a shrine to Michael Jackson. I was here last year, and I figured that the "Michael Jackson shrine" thing would just be temporary. But it's still here!
Just start talking, and the staff will respond in whatever language you speak. They won't make you feel like an idiot American who only speaks one language.
I used to stay at 5-sterne hotels a lot, back when I was an investment banker. So I got pretty particular about them. The Bayerischer kind-of sort-of held its own.
And there's a TOWEL WARMER. Water flows through those pipes and warms your towels 24/7. I felt guilty about having water warming my towels 24/7. So I turned it off.
The shampoo and toiletries are high quality. I do have an aside about the Bayerischer shampoo, however. The scent is "lemon grass." And the only other time in my life I have encountered lemon grass is in Thai soups. So washing my hair smelled like dumping a bowl of Thai soup over my head.
Okay, time for the quibbles. And bear in mind that, as I was noticing these things, I was imagining that the Bayerischer Hof cost ~$700 a night--the going rate for a 5-star hotel in New York. At ~$700 a night, you can be seriously particular. So it seemed to me that it was time for the BH to re-polish their floors.
The befuddling light switches weren't the Bayerischer Hof's fault--I assume they're a German thing--but there wasn't much discernible rhyme or reason to them.
Press one, and all the lights would go off. Press another and nothing would happen. Press the third and some lights would come on. Press another one somewhere else and a couple of outlets would go off. I never did figure them out.
And here is something I would have found really irritating (if I had been paying for the room). The Bayerischer Hof is a 5-sterne hotel. It costs gazillions of dollars a night. So they're really going to nickel and dime me for some wasser?
All in, though, I loved my stay in the Bayerischer Hof (especially because it was complimentary). And I was a lot more forgiving of the worn floorboards, nickel-and-diming, and strange aroma when I checked on TripAdvisor and found that the BH is "only" $400 a night.
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Henry Blodget cofounded Business Insider, then called "Silicon Alley Insider," in the loading dock of another New York-based startup in 2007. He served as Editor in Chief until 2017 and CEO until 2023. Business Insider is now owned by Axel Springer.A former top-ranked Wall Street analyst, Henry is often a guest on CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and other networks. He has contributed to The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, Fortune, New York, the Financial Times, and other publications (including, of course, Business Insider!). He has written extensively about technology and investing and is the author of "The Wall Street Self-Defense Manual: A Consumer's Guide to Investing."
