Nice clean room that has a lot of space and contains good well designed and manufactured furniture.  It also should have a nice clean bathroom with a good selection of towels, small soaps, small shampoos and conditioner, and a shower cap, all of which are cleaned or refreshed every day .  Rooms should have nice comfortable beds that get the linen and bedspreads changed every day, no exception.  The definition is that same as what a business person would expect when travelling on business.  It also helps if the rooms and function areas have a good view of what lies outside of them, either cityscape, rivers, lakes, and so on.  Also, the hotel should have good inhouse food/bar service that delivers to the room if customers so desire.  Taxi or shuttle service should be readliy available at the hotel.  

Interestingly enough, even pricey hotels are not upscale.  I remember renting a room at a pricey hotel in a major US city and being overwhelmed by the rank from the toilet when I walked into the room.  I knew what was wrong and I had the problem taken care of immediately while I directed the person doing so.  As my stay went over several days, I realized that the linen was not being changed every day, this really stunk because when I normally got back to the room the cleaning people were done for the day, I am not one to complain much, so for the linen situation I tolerated it since I showered twice a day and was the only person sleeping on it.  On the flip side, one of the best hotel chains that I have ever stayed at was also probaly the cheapest, really changed the view I had of price/quality for hotels.

-- Modified on 2/16/2004 1:00:51 PM