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LODGING CHANGES BREW IN MILWAUKEE
By Chris Barnett
July 25, 2013 -- For a city of 600,000 people, with five Fortune 500 companies and a now-stabilized manufacturing base, Milwaukee has never been especially hospitable to business travelers.

True, Milwaukee was for decades the hub of Midwest Express, one of the most-loved carriers ever to ply the U.S. skies. The reasonably priced airline with roomy leather seats was celebrated for its tasty meals, premium wines, fine china and baked-on-board chocolate chip cookies.

Midwest Express eventually ran out of gas and was sold in 2009 to a commuter-airline operator called Republic Airways Holdings. It combined Midwest Express--by then known as Midwest Airlines--with Frontier Airlines and promised to keep the faith in Milwaukee. Today, Frontier's ticket counter at Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport is dark, empty and eerie. Frontier's flight schedule at Milwaukee has shrunk to just one a day, to Frontier's Denver hub.

True, Milwaukee today is served by all of the legacy airlines, but most of their flights out of Mitchell International are connections using smaller regional jets. Hence business travelers leaving Milwaukee and its nearby Wisconsin suburbs are now spending more time in-transit and in cramped in-flight quarters.

The good news in Milwaukee? The city's lodging scene is much healthier than the airline scene.

The city has an iconic downtown luxury hotel, the four-star Pfister. It impresses right from the start, with a gleaming, mahogany-paneled and elegantly furnished lobby. Resident musicologist and lobby pianist Dr. Jeffrey Hollander takes requests nightly and says he has a repertoire of 4,000 songs. The 120-year-old, antique-filled, 307-room Pfister overlooks Lake Michigan and is genuinely posh. While a few rooms are occasionally available on the Web for $169 nightly, Pfister rooms midweek usually command more than $200 a night. On my most recent visit, I was impressed with the staff's friendly and responsive service.

Until a year ago, the 759-room Hilton Milwaukee City Center attached to the newly renamed Wisconsin Center dominated downtown. It was also one of the few hotels where serious road warriors could add points to their frequent guest programs.

Despite its substantial size, the hotel employees I encountered were agile and attentive. Call it the Midwest work ethic. They were proactive and attentive. For a full-service convention hotel, this Hilton gets good marks. Karen Lopez, a medical products field saleswoman from Ohio, likes the hotel's location (a $25 cab ride from the airport) and the "size and amenities of even the standard king-bedded room." Rates at the four-diamond Hilton usually run around $200 a night during the week.

Historically, the Hilton's downtown rival has been the 481-room Hyatt Regency Milwaukee, which is also adjacent to the convention center. Built in the 1980s, the Hyatt's room rates are typically lower. The hotel's central reservation line this week quoted $179 a night for a queen-size standard room and $189 a night for a king-bedded accommodation.

The otherwise-ubiquitous Marriott never had its flagship hotel brand in the city or the suburbs until last month when local investors opened the $54 million, 204-room Milwaukee Marriott Downtown. Owners leveled most of a block of old brick buildings on Wisconsin Street to make way for the new property. Situated near the long-neglected but recently energized Third Ward, this modern hotel has upped the ante for business travelers. It's also smaller, hipper and warmer than most Marriott properties I've visited. King rooms average $229 nightly.

Marriott loyalists who do not want to pony up for the new full-service hotel have a couple more reasonably priced options. There's the 12-year-old Courtyard Milwaukee Downtown. The 159-room property has one of Courtyard's new-wave lobbies that includes the 50-inch GoBoard and the Bistro cafe. Nightly rates average $150 during the week, but jump up on weekends when visitors, vacationers and families check in.

Last year, Marriott opened the 103-room Fairfield Inn and Suites Milwaukee Downtown. It's the second Fairfield in the city--the first is near the airport--but this property is a former Best Western that's been reflagged and renovated. Rooms range from $139 to $209 a night; a hot breakfast and Internet access are on the house.

Marriott also has a Residence Inn in Milwaukee, but if business requires you to stay a while, check out something hip and historic: the Brewhouse Inn & Suites. This isn't a Disneyesque fantasy, but a 90-room extended-stay hotel that occupies half of the old Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery. It's hard to describe the place other than to say that it was the centerpiece of a 28-building beer factory that dates back to the 19th century.

Every room in the six-floor hotel is a suite. Ceilings and windows are around 20 feet high. That makes the rooms seem airy and massive. The property has a gym and a business center and all guests receive complimentary Internet access.

The old Pabst complex was located in an industrial area so you're staying about two miles north of downtown Milwaukee. You can't walk out the door and go shopping or restaurant hopping. But a beer hall attached to the hotel has a lunch and dinner menu and the inn provides a free breakfast. Rates start at $189 a night, and if you stay a month, prices drop to $89 a night. And you'll certainly never go thirsty at the Brewhouse Inn. There is plenty of Pabst on hand plus a half–dozen better brews on tap. You might win a few bar bets here, too.

Question: How many blue ribbons did Pabst win over the years?
Answer: None, but it did win a couple gold medals.

Question: Where is Pabst brewed if the brewery was shut down in 1996?
Answer: Down the road a bit at the MillerCoors brewery on West State Street. Pabst's corporate headquarters is now in Los Angeles.

ABOUT CHRIS BARNETT Chris Barnett writes about business-travel tactics and strategies that save time and money and help minimize hassles. He is based in San Francisco and has written for a wide variety of major newspapers and national magazines.

THE FINE PRINT Joe Brancatelli makes this space available to Chris Barnett in the spirit of free speech and to help encourage editorial diversity and the wider discussion of important travel issues. All of the opinions and material in this column are the sole property of Barnett. This material may not be reproduced in any form without the express permission of Chris Barnett.

This column is Copyright © 2013 by Chris Barnett. JoeSentMe is Copyright © 2013 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved.