New Lodging Partner – The Press Hotel

Portland’s lodging properties are always looking for options for their guests to enjoy while visiting our city. The Press Hotel is our newest affiliate and a true partner with us.

The Press Hotel is a stunning 110-room property at the top of Exchange Street (where it meets Congress) in Downtown Portland. Situated directly across from City Hall, the very large building built in two phases housed the offices for the Portland Press Herald for nearly 90 years.

The Press Hotel has a great location right across from City Hall. TripAdvisor contributed photo

After $12 million dollars in renovations were completed, the property welcomed it’s first guests nearly one year ago. Check out some of the details and pictures in this Press Herald article about the opening.

Some of those very first guests were also on board our bus for a tour, and we started to hear immediately about how special this hotel was.

Once they were open to the public, we were asked to provide a bus and a driver, Paul, to bring some of the design and construction team out for a celebratory afternoon to L.L. Bean for some target practice at their range, Maine Beer Company for hoppy treats, , and Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster. The group had a fantastic time on that trip.

Over the winter we have strengthened our relationship with The Press Hotel. We met with their reservations and guest services staff, and they became an official affiliate of ours.

An affiliate is any company that has live access to our reservation system and can make direct tour bookings for guests on our tours. .

In this example, if guests are staying at The Press Hotel and want to know of some fun things to do while they are in town, a member of the hotel guest services team can book those people on one of our available tours and put the charges right on the room folio. The booking is received in our system, and then we invoice the hotel for the charges at the end of each month.

We have several affiliates now in place with more on the way. You can see the current properties on the lodging partner page on our website.

The Exchange St entrance to The Press Hotel. Press Hotel photo

We now include The Press Hotel as a preferred lodging partner in our pre-tour communication to our guests. Once a tour is booked, confirmation and reminder e-mails contain links to these partner hotels, inns, and B&B’s to assist our guests that are traveling from outside the area to find a lodging option that works best for them.

But it doesn’t end there. We also worked with The Press Hotel to also include us on their website as an option for fun things to do while visiting Portland. This way, if Portland is being considered as a vacation destination along with other locations, perhaps the allure of a Maine Brew Bus tour will help persuade them to visit our city.

One more thing, we visited with the team from The Press Hotel and conducted a staff tasting session with some of the beers that they serve at Union and Inkwell. Zach and Aaron were able to also talk about our tours, and discuss with the team our various tour options and the producers that the itineraries visit.

We will conduct another session with them next month, and have talked about using their space as a potential location for beer education sessions that would be open to the public. Stay tuned for more on this exciting development.

And if you get the chance, be sure to check out The Press Hotel. Enjoy the nice newspaper-themed touches in the lobby, grab a drink at Inkwell, walk the hallways and observe the fun design elements, or enjoy a great meal at Union. It’s a truly newsworthy experience.

Don Littlefield is the General Manager of The Maine Brew Bus. You may also know him as “the Ryan Seacrest of Birds on Tap“. He is driving back to back tours today, so he is enjoying Coffee By Design Casco Bay Blend coffee. Twitter: @BeerinME