Best Western International

With everyone saving their party game for March 8—Mardi Gras—there are plenty of well-priced hotels in New Orleans for this long weekend. And it being New Orleans, visitors won't exactly be given short shrift on drinking and carousing just because the official holiday is still a couple weeks away.
And so to the booking engine we go! The bad news is that the French Quarter hotels are, for the most part, sold out for Saturday night. But many Canal Street properties, which are on the edge of the Quarter anyway, have rooms for the night like the Holiday Inn French Quarter ($200) and the Marriott ($219). The InterContinental is at $195 for Saturday night; the Westin Canal Place is at $269. But the deal of the bunch is the Best Western Saint Christopher at just $109 for Saturday.

As for a Presidential connection, why, Jackson Square is named for the seventh president, who turned back the British invasion of the city in 1815, saving New Orleans from a future that would've otherwise been proper, well-mannered and regal. Celebrate appropriately inappropriately.
[Photo of Jackson Square: Holiday Inn French Quarter]

Watch Where You Sit at This Hotel or You Could Get Pregnant

This might just be the hardest-working hotel, um, chair in the business. Seven women claim that the receptionist's chair at the Best Western Moore Place Hotel in Milton Keynes, England got them pregnant over 18 months.
Not "got them pregnant" in a bizarro errant sperm-on-the-seat sort of way but rather, with its mysterious fertile powers." The Daily Mail reports:

Elaine Ledster, Kim Gidley, Laura Burchill and Gina Ripley were the first to fall pregnant while working as receptionists at the Best Western Moore Place Hotel.
They were swiftly followed by the three remaining receptionists, Alyce Grisley, Claire Fitchett and Seran Daines.
General manager Giles Shaw said: 'The chair is just a typical office swivel chair, but we now have staff refusing to sit on it.'

And the color of this office swivel chair may also have an added power--all the receptionists have given birth or are about to give birth to boys.
So take a deep breath and heave a sigh of relief as you no longer have to shell out money for IVF treatments or even go on one of those silly conception moons. Just head to Milton Keynes and sit on the chair in the Best Western instead!
Betcha someone at Best Western is now working furiously to figure out a way to market and sell a line of Best Western Fertility Chairs. Westin and their Heavenly Beds will be so jealous!

Guests at Best Westerns May Be a Whole Lot Sexier, Thanks to Virgin Atlantic

Now this is an interesting partnership. The stylish Virgin Atlantic has teamed up with not-so-stylish Best Western Hotels brand to offer guests up to 500 Flying Club miles when they stay at any Best Western Hotel in the world.
High-low fashion senses aside, since there are over 4,000 Best Western International in 90 countries worldwide, there are plenty of opportunities for you to earn Flying Club miles. Some of the hotels aren’t bad either, even Carey Mulligan stays in them.
To celebrate this partnership Best Western have created a cheeky modern remake of Virgin Altlantic’s 25th anniversary video which played homage to the 1980s when the company was founded.

The new video features a bunch of vamped up trolley dollies and a pilot dressed in Virgin Atlantic uniforms and those rather trashy red patent leather stilettos. The “crew” causes quite a stir in the Best Western Premier Queen Hotel in Chester as opposed to the inside an airport in the original Virgin Atlantic commercial.
The one minor caveat is that this partnership with Virgin Atlantic is only a part of the Best Western Rewards program in Great Britain. No so sexy alliance is happening stateside yet.