Pub Options Near The Centro Motel

Montgomery is one of the areas of the city that's slated for an ongoing Redevelopement Plan. It has some pretty neat stuff in it; Community Gardens, a San Francisco Trolley-Car style of public transport, even sidewalks designed to be porous so we don't get any ice or water build up on them in the spring. However, until that day off in the future, there is one area of service in the Montgomery neighbourhood that is somewhat under-filled. That area is Pubs. Don't despair though, you can always go...

On A Time Travelling Trip To 1980's Saskatchewan at Pazzer's

If that sounds horrible to you, well... It's not. Trust me. While the decor is pretty kitschy, the beer is well-priced, and the food is surprisingly good. Just to clarify here, I don't mean to say that this is the kind of place you would expect to produce bad food, I mean it is surprisingly good for ANY Pub. Also, $4 beers for Happy Hour is pretty nice. The service is quite good, the prices even better, and the hand made Perogies are fantastic.

This bar is also a very short stagger from the Centro Motel. Which makes the $4 Happy Hour drinks even better.

Grab A Few Asahis' With Your Sashimi at Sushi-Bar Miki

For those who don't know, Asahi is a brand of Japanese Beer. It's pretty good. Not as good as the Sashimi produced by Sushi-Bar Miki, though. Having said that, you can get better Sushi elsewhere in Calgary (there are 66 Sushi Bars in the city according to Yelp), but this place is a must-go if you're looking for the authentic home style Japanese restaurant experience.

The bottom line is, at Sushi Bar Miki there are decent prices, good quality food, and excellent service.

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village and now on a completely unintuitive, yet direct, path from the airport. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. Also, our parking lot is just massive. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.

Check Out Centro's New Pinterest Boards!

There's been quite a lot of buzz about a little website called Pinterest lately. Most of it good, some of it grumpy, and I have to admit that at first I thought it was going to be like Instagram for websites. Instead of crappy, over-filtered pictures of kittens and hipsters it would be crappy, over-filtered images of people's favourite arts and crafts. Possibly even some yarn-bombing.

However, I was somewhat wrong. Pinterest is a pretty great way to share visual information.

Instagram is still full awful, emo, preachy-ass hipsters, though.

 

Luckily, we have the Instagram Rebuttal Meme to toss a whole basket-full of Snark at all those goddamn hipsters.

 

At any rate, I've put up a few boards with some great photos of the rooms and suites from the various Hotel properties that I work for. So, if you're into design, travel, or you just want to see what kinds of hotels inspire our various Boutique Hotel Concepts come on over and take a look!

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.

A Brand New Hotel Scam (Or, One Day My Nigerian Prince Will Come)

Scamming Credit Cards is considered a sport in some countries, most notably Nigeria and Indonesia, and there's a new scam out there that specifically targets hotels.

Here's how it works. Credit Cards are assigned in series, so all the scammer needs is the last four digits of any credit card and they can guess what expiry date the next card issued has. For example, if you have a card number that ends in 5897 there's somebody out there with a card that ends in 5898. Since most cards are issued with a 4-year expiry it's not as overwhelming as you might think.

Once they have a card that they know will work, the scammers will contact a hotel offering them a deal most hoteliers would never pass up. Usually, this is a group booking for an imaginary tour company. However, there's a problem with the booking. Unfortunately, their tour operator in (insert your city/country here) has no way to process credit cards. So, all the hotel has to do is charge their credit card for their stay, plus a large amount to be then transferred to the “Tour Operator”. After this is done, the hotel booking can be cancelled, and the amount refunded. But, it doesn't really matter as it will be three weeks before the hotel finds out that they just charged someone in Newark for a booking coming from Germany. So, the hotel loses however much money it 'forwarded', and the scammer gets away scot free.

Here's an example of a typical e-mail from one of these scammers.

---

Hello Sir/Madam,

Greetings ,

My name is Mr. Adam Smith Scammy McCheaterface. aviationspecialists.company
Company Plc]. I want to make a reservation in your Calgary motel for some 4 staffs and 2 trainees uncomplaining them as they all coming for course Training .

Details:
..................

Arrival: 10th of March. 2012

Departure: 21th of March. 2012

No. of Rooms: 6

Type of Rooms: Single or double
No of Guest: 6

Duration: 10 nights

Please Confirm availability and get back to me with your rates and total cost. and let me know dates that are available if you don't have this date available
Hope to hear from you soon. Please write back to me with my private email (totallynotascam@yahoo.com)

Kind Regards,
Adam Smith Scammy McCheaterface

---

From: Centro Motel
Subject: RE: HOTEL RESERVATION
To: totallynotascam@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, September 27, 2011, 10:14 PM

Dear Mr. Smith McCheaterface,

Thank you very much for your inquiry! Yes, we have rooms available here at the Centro Motel, and the best price for you is $99.00 per night, per room for our queen size bed suite.

Thank You!

---

From: totallynotascam@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2011 1:49am
To: Centro Motel
Subject: TOTAL COST FOR HOTEL RESERVATION

Thank you for your mail and confirmation of the 5 rooms availability for the 6adults Which will be shared amongst them.I am grateful to that but i will like to have the total cost of their stay/ breakfast for 10 days summed up and sent to me calculated in Euro, USD or GBP so that I will make Deposit of your cost services through my credit card for you to hold the reservation for us. Arrival: 10th of March.2012 Departure: 21st of March. 2012 No. of Rooms: 6 Type of Rooms: single or double No of Guest: 6 However, I wish to inform you that we also made an arrangement with a travel agent who will be handling the travelling arrangements/logistic needs of my Son and the people coming with them. Hope to hear from you soon Best Regards, Adam Smith Scammy McCheaterface

---

From: Centro Motel
Subject: RE: TOTAL COST FOR HOTEL RESERVATION
To: totallynotascam@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, September 29, 2011, 4:44 PM

Dear Mr McCheaterface

I can hold 6 rooms for you from March 10th till march 21th for 11 nights Queen Bed room type at rate of $99.00 CAD. Total Amount In CAD is $9558.66, and in USD it's $9240.84 with all the tax included. We can hold your rooms only for 2 weeks, so kindly confirm me with in two weeks.

If you have any other questions please feel free to ask.

Thank You!

---

From: totallynotascam@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 6:43am
To: Centro Motel
Subject: PAYMENT DETAILS FOR HOTEL RESERVATION

Hello, Thank you for your mail below. The staff along with the trainees coming with them has agreed to stay in your hotel rooms for the period of time requested,Anyway, just to ease up the total cost,I will be making a part payment with my credit card to enable you hold the reservation for us. However,Like I told you earlier I also made an arrangement with a prepaid travel agent who will take care of traveling documents and logistics need for the group during their coming and entire stay in your hotel,but because I will be making a trip soon to Chicago Usa ,for a Conference, I called the travel agent this morning to send my credit card details for them to charge for the services but they informed me that they don't have a credit card facility to charge my credit card. So I have decided that only your hotel will have to charge my credit card. I will send to you the credit card details as soon as I hear back from you. Once you receive the credit card details I will direct you on what to do. Because I will like you to settle the agent from my card. So upon the receipt of my credit card details you are to run the charges of $10,000 and deduct $3,000 for your service and send the remaining $7,000 to the agent whose information will be sent to you Finally,confirm this arrangement and provide me with your information below i will be completing the total payment of the reservation 2 weeks before arrival for the group. (1) Your hotel full name/address................. (2) Name of the Manager/Owner.................. (3) Hotel's telephone and fax numbers......... Regards. Adam Smith Scammy McCheaterface

---

At this point we just told Mr. McCheaterface that we wouldn't, under any circumstances, forward any funds off of a credit card. He stopped e-mailing us.

Hillhurst/Sunnyside Farmers Market

If you're the type of person who is running an illegal chicken coup in your backyard, but you're sick of not getting any recognition for your achievements in black-market poultry, you're probably pretty excited right about now.

This... this isn't what that is, right? Can someone explain the appeal to me? Please?

From October 3^rd to the 7^th, the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association’s (HSCA) Harvest Market will be running its last farmer's market of the year. Now, if you're wondering what this has to do with illegal chicken coups, just bear with me a minute. This year, you can win an award for the best illegal chicken operation, as well as for the best Guerilla Garden.

It's less armed bands of soldiers, and more just planting stuff wherever you can get away with it.

Anyways, if you have a garden in Calgary, you can send in a photo of it doing it's thing to be eligible to win gift certificates to the River Café, Pages Books and the Sunnyside Garden Centre. There's even a prize for a free one-day rental of a bouncy castle.

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.

Should Motels Have Mobile Websites?

Smart Phones are changing everything about how the Internet does business. Now, having a mobile version of your website to appeal to the ever-growing percentage of people who regularly browse the web on their smart phones makes more sense than ever. But, not every business really needs one. So, what about Motels? For the most part, Motels depend on their guests picking them out of the lineup of similar businesses located on whatever main road they all happen to sit on. Or, we look for people who like to plan things beforehand, and are happy to browse through a whole website or two to find the perfect Motel for them. However, back to those Smart Phones, those lines are blurring together now with travelers not bothering to look anything up until they arrive at their destination, and when they look Motels they're doing it on a Smart Phone. Besides, there's a few other reason to do it, as well. There's the fact that...

It's Good SEO

One more URL out there that links to your content with the same Meta Data as your website is always good for your ranking. Or, if the Mobile site is a SubDomain of your main site, it's just one more page with index-able content for the search engine crawlers to gather up.

Here's a peek at our Mobile Site. It really pays to keep it clean and simple with these. 

It Helps People Find You While On Their Phone (in the car for example)

There's been more than a few instances were guests driving in got some bad directions, or just plain forgot to bring a map. In this case, being able to get a Mobil Site up on a smart phone and, not having to navigate a full-sized site on a tiny screen makes a huge difference in how happy your guests are when they find their way in.

 

Here's the Mobile Site that our friends at the Nuvo Hotel Suites uses. Again, clean and simple is the way to go.

There's No Good Reason NOT to Have One

As a Boutique Motel, our primary market is individuals who are on the move. If you're driving through a strange city and you're looking for a place to stay, it's more than likely that it'll be a Motel you end up staying at. It just makes sense to a appeal to a mobile market with a Mobile Website.

Also, since there isn't really any development cost involved in the process, it becomes pretty simple to weigh the Pros and the non-existent Cons. Using a paid for hosting site like MoFuse, you can get going with your own Mobile Site in under an hour, for about $9 a month.

The Centro Motel is Calgary’s first Boutique Motel. Located in the Montgomery neighbourhood, just south of Calgary’s Motel Village and now on a completely unintuitive, yet direct, path from the airport. The Centro offers stylish, trendy rooms at competitive prices. Also, our parking lot is just massive. For more information on booking, rooms and rates, check out the home page, or Contact Us.