I’ve skipped the lines in many places using my VIP status, even places where I probably don’t belong. My Hyatt-to-MGM matched elite status let me skip the very long line at a club there. But that doesn’t mean I’m always looking for a party.

I remember being impressed a decade ago when I headed over to the Intercontinental Chicago O’Hare and was picked up in a new black ‘party bus’. And the old Intercontinental Manila was a real party scene, beyond most any W hotel, because it had a top night club right off the pool catering to locals not guests.

The Denver Airport Marriott at Gateway Park takes things way too far. Reader Joe shares his travails with their airport shuttle which, he offers, is “a literal party bus, it smells horrid.”

Credit: Joe R.

No question inventory for vehicles is tight. And hotels have cut costs where they can. But this seems like the wrong direction for the Denver Gateway Airport Marriott.

TO be sure I’m not a velvet rope kind of guy, but I am the target market for a full service airport hotel. At the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore I was escorted to the front of the line at the night club at the top of the hotel after a dinner at Waku Ghin restaurant. It turned out they were below their quote for white people at the time (an important signal in Southeast Asia).

I remember feeling briefly out of place at the old W San Diego when everyone walking through the lobby was far younger, better looking, and better dressed than I was. Then I told myself that most of them weren’t actually guests of the hotel and I was staying in the Extreme Wow Suite (on a mistake rate).

I can be down with most any party, but this party bus just doesn’t seem “on brand” for an airport Marriott.