Wakeup call on free hotel breakfasts

You awaken, and your brain quickly takes stock of where you are. You realize: It's time.

You arise from your bed, brush your teeth, throw on some clothes, perhaps from the night before — what you're about to do is more important than how you look — and slip out your hotel-room door, taking a deep breath for the mission ahead: attacking the free breakfast.

The free hotel breakfast is a rite of travel, and as much as we all love it, we also realize it's fraught with perils: the long line to the iron-it-yourself waffle machine; the woman who carefully picks every strawberry out of the fruit tray; the guy who stands in front of the coffee, blocking everyone else, endlessly stirring in his selected sweetener, testing, then adding more.

And, yet, we put up with all that because we very much want the breakfast.

"It's extremely important. Everybody eats breakfast," says Jody Smith, who has for 10 years managed an Embassy Suites in Austin. "I believe it's one of the reasons why people stay here."

An acknowledgement of that assessment is the proliferation of free breakfasts at hotel chains and the fact that even full-service hotels that don't offer free breakfast now often include it when they put together promotional packages. In the same way that coffeepots started making their way into the rooms of full-service hotels years back, those hotels now are starting to acknowledge that people like eating breakfast.

In addition to chains, some independently owned inns such as the Rochester Hotel in Durango, Colo., and Inn on the Alameda in Santa Fe, N.M., serve free breakfast (and both of those, I'll note, are excellent).

"Bacon has a tendency to make people happy," she says.

Full-service hotels might be dipping in their toes, but the free breakfast buffet remains primarily the hallmark of budget and midpriced brands that don't have their own restaurants.

Embassy Suites consistently rates high when people are asked about their favorite free breakfasts, because, in addition to the pastries, fruit and cereal at most chains, it offers cooked-to-order hot items. Tell the person in the chef hat what you want — omelet, waffle, whatever — and he or she makes it.

Hyatt Place is another travelers' favorite, offering meat-and-egg biscuits, waffles, pancakes, fruit and pastries. Hampton Inns and Fairfield Inns draw kudos for including some hot items.

"I'm a fan of Hampton Inn because there's good variety, and they don't let it run out by the end of breakfast time," says frequent traveler Sheila Scarborough of Round Rock, Texas.

Few others skip it, though, and because of that chains seem always to be beefing up their breakfast buffets. Well, all except for a London hotel I visited where the free breakfast consisted of coffee and a trough — literally a trough — of hard rolls.

Super 8 recently mandated an "enhanced SuperStart breakfast" at all of its properties, including its signature "Simply Super Cinnamon Roll" (warm it up in the toaster oven; it's tasty), at least two cereals, oatmeal, fruit, bread, juice, coffee and do-it-yourself waffles.

Super 8 spokesman Rob Myers acknowledges that there were big differences in Super 8 breakfasts. The new mandate makes them standard, he says, although "there are minor regional differences."

We know what regional difference he's talking about, right? I ran smack into it at the Mount Vernon Super 8 this past summer and the Fairfield Inn DFW in Grapevine earlier this month: the Texas-shaped waffle. To my knowledge, no other state issues waffles in its own shape. Other states' hotels, bless their hearts, make do with round.

Hotel breakfast waffle irons, by the way, are clearly among the most popular features of the free breakfast, based on the lines that form when such a machine is present.

Like I said, fraught with peril. But worth it. A little strategy is needed, though. For me, it involves first making and consuming a cup of coffee in the room. Otherwise, there's no way I can face that ravenous horde. Second, be neither the earliest nor the latest free breakfaster.

Embassy Suites has breakfast hours of 6 to 9 a.m. — 7 to 10:30 a.m. on weekends, so people can sleep in — and Smith says there are two big rushes: at the beginning of service and at the end, when the sleep-inners wake up.