PREFERS TEMPLE'S OFFENSE TO PRINCETON'S
Video: Inquirer's Bob Ford debates the Series
Photos: 2009 Phillies TWO BIG GROUPS are coming to Philadelphia this weekend - the Yankees and the Infectious Diseases Society of America - and one of them has area hotels offering get-well packages.
"Some would point out the coincidence of the Yankees and the Infectious Diseases Convention coming to town in the same weekend," said Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association. "However, I'm not going to go there."
Among the hotels offering get-well giveaways to Yankees fans is the Hilton Inn at Penn, which is calling its promotion the "We Yankees Grief Kit."
On top of their double-occupancy World Series package, which includes SEPTA tokens to get to and from the ballpark and $25 in food credit, the grief kit will include tissues, a Phillies rally towel for the big tears, a box of Band-Aids, a signed collector's plaque of Chase Utley's baseball card, a P-shaped soft pretzel and a tiny Phillies batting helmet, said Nancy Barag, the hotel association's director of sales and marketing.
Barag said the kit will be given to every guest who books a World Series package, and not just Yankees fans.
Since putting the package on the Internet recently, the hotel has seen a "surge" in reservations, Barag said. Fans from as far as California, Kenya and of course, the far-out land of New York, have booked rooms.
The Windsor Suites on Ben Franklin Parkway is helping Yankee fans "Chase" the blues away by offering extra tissues to all Yankees fans and a continental breakfast for two.
At the DoubleTree Hotel on Broad Street, they're offering the "3-4-5 & Still Alive" package that will include complimentary parking, an appetizer and a coupon for two bottles of Brooklyn Pennant Ale '55, a beer dedicated to the memory of the 1955 world champion Dodgers.
Many hotel employees are expected to be decked out in Phillies gear throughout the series, Grose said, but they will promise to treat Yankee fans with the same hospitality as they do everyone else.
"However, good-natured ribbing may happen," he said.
This has turned out to be an important weekend for the hotel industry in Philadelphia, which from last September to this one saw a 12.8 percent decline in the average daily room rate and a 4 percent decline in occupancy rates, according to a study by Smith Travel Research.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America convention, which is being held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, is already keeping about 2,500 rooms, or a quarter of the Philadelphia hotel inventory, booked from yesterday to Sunday.
But Grose said there still were plenty of rooms available for World Series attendees. He also said that the hotel association has a contingency plan in place to get employees to and from work in the event of a SEPTA strike and that it's working on providing transportation for guests to the ballpark if there is a strike.
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