Indianapolis Area Hotel

I met with Jillian's a couple weeks ago and was treated to lunch. Do you know Jillian's? It's that restaurant/bar/club/bowling alley/billiards room/arcade entertainment venue in downtown Indianapolis just a few blocks from the Hilton Garden Inn. The food was delicious! I had a chicken pasta dish and sweet tea. Just a heads up, if you haven't eaten there, you should really take the time to check it out. Their menu is varied and my contact recommends just about everything!

During my meeting, we discussed an idea to set up a new Indianapolis hotel package for all you guests out there. It will partner our downtown Indy hotel with entertainment and gift certificate from Jillian's to keep you occupied while there. Another hotel deal I'm working on is with the Indiana Repertory Theatre, or IRT. Stay and see a play, experience the Indy arts scene. Keep your eyes peeled for a couple new packages coming this August!

Don't forget about our other packages we're always selling. Our hotel packages are a great way to find a discount hotel room in Indianapolis paired with great goodies from local businesses or from our hotel.
Indianapolis Zoo Package
Circle Centre Shopping Package
Wine Lovers Package and
Romance Package
Just go to our website and check availability for your preferred staycation date and see which one fits you best!

Green Key Global is a international organization (US and Canada) that ranks hotels on 9 areas of sustainability (energy conservation, water conservation, solid waste management, hazardous waste management, indoor air quality, community outreach, building infrastructure, land use, and environmental management).  This encompasses all facets of our business from our hotel meetings to our hotel sleeping rooms.

A Four Green Keys designation is described by Green Key Global in this way:  “A hotel that has shown national industry leadership and commitment to protecting the environment through wide ranging policies and practices.  Mature programs that involve management, employees, guests, and the public have shown substantial and measurable results.

If travelling green is important to you, and you need hotel accommodations Indianapolis, then we invite you to stay with us or check out our environmental statement above. 
 

While perusing Twitter for interesting things around town, I came across this link.  Indianapolis was listed in the top 50 bike-friendly cities in the country! Although there are many trails in Indy to ride, the most well-known and probably the most popular is the Monon Trail.  It's beginning/end points are located in downtown, near 10th and Massachusetts, connects with the Monon Greenway at 96th Street and ends at 146th and Gray Road.

Mass Ave is a great place to start, too!  The avenue touts some great local restaurants, unique shopping, salons, theatres and music venues.  Our hotel is the closest of the downtown Indy hotels near Murat Centre, where touring bands, comedians and plays stop to entertain.  Another staple, and one of my personal favorites, The Rathskeller is on Mass Ave.  They have a great outdoor biergarten with concerts in the summer, a beautiful historic feel and a dizzying list of great German beers from which to choose!  Also, many of the weddings booked at The Rathskeller find accommodations for their guests at our Indianapolis wedding hotel.

The Monon is paved and has great scenery along the way.  From industrial warehouses to residential areas and a jaunt through Broad Ripple, the Monon has lots to see in its 15.5 miles.  The Monon begins just 1.5 walking/riding miles from the Hilton Garden Inn Indianapolis Downtown.  So you can start here, ride up, check out Broad Ripple and Carmel or start up there and come visit our hotel Indianapolis green hotel just off the greenway!

The Hilton Garden Inn Indianapolis Downtown would like to announce and introduce ourselves as a new member and Preferred Hotel partner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  We are very excited about our new partnership! Being one of the Indianapolis downtown hotels near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it seems natural we partner with the most famous sports venue in the world right here in Indianapolis.

I and the staff at the Hilton Garden Inn are committed to working hard to create competitive packages for our partners, like you, that include preferred partner benefits whether you are here for the races or other meetings and events in town. What are you waiting for? Let the Hilton Garden Inn put you in the driver’s seat for the 94^th running of the Indy 500, scheduled for May 30 at the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway! Don't forget about the Brickyard 400® and the Red Bull Indianapolis GP®!

**This is your opportunity to experience our HGI hospitality and the rush of The Greatest Spectacle in Racing® at a great Indianapolis hotel package price!

-=For package pricing and availability on our great Indianapolis hotel deal, please contact Camille Lauer at 317-405-5709 or clauer@fhginc.com.
 

Carrie Underwood, Academy of Country Music Awards Entertainer of the Year and the woman named Top Female Vocalist, will be in Indianapolis on Friday, April 9 at Conseco Fieldhouse! Carrie also recently won a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for "I Told You So" (with Randy Travis).  Come see this country star shine!  Great seats are still available and being one of the downtown Indy hotels near Conseco Fieldhouse, what better place to stay than with us?

If you're taking that special someone out for an evening on the town, top it off with one of our Indianapolis hotel packages.  We have a great Romance Package that includes dessert to share, a bottle of wine (no underage drinking, of course!), breakfast for two the next morning and a 1pm check-out!  Are you not planning a romantic getaway, but a trip with the girls instead?  Another hotel package we have is our Girlfriends Getaway which includes an $80 spa certificate for Studio 2000, just across the street, and breakfast for two!

Wow! it is hard to believe that the Big Ten Tournament is about to start again; it just seemed like yesterday our downtown Indianapolis hotel was playing host to some of the most notable teams in the Big Ten Conference. This year is extra special as the city of Indianapolis takes center stage in the NCAA Tournament. With the selections and seedings being announced right here in Indianapolis before the Tournament, as well as the Final Four with the Championship game being played at Lucas Oil Stadium downtown, there is sure to be a buzz in and around our city for the next couple months.

With all the action and excitement located just blocks away from the Hilton Garden Inn,  there is an opportunity to be part of March Madness as it transcends into downtown Indianapolis. There are a very limited amount of spaces available for the women’s as well as the men’s Big Ten Tournament, so don’t delay and make your reservations today! We are one of the hotels near Conseco Fieldhouse, at only two blocks which is a very convenient walk to all the action, and near Indianapolis Airport. So when you’re searching for downtown Indianapolis hotel accommodations, and cheer on your team, join us at the Hilton Garden Inn Indianapolis Downtown! Although the Final Four is not available, don’t miss the chance to be a part of this historic year in the Big Ten Conference as well as the NCAA Final Four!

Calling all stylists!  Are you ready for the fashion experience of a lifetime? The Indianapolis Children’s Museum presents Barbie: The Fashion Experience, where you can not only be Barbie’s stylist, or makeup artist, but you can also walk the runway as she would!  Barbie will be on the runway in Indianapolis until February 2011.  The Children’s Museum is less than five minutes away straight up Meridian Street. Also, don’t forget to bring along your friends to meet Barbie!

Our General Manager, Mike Campbell, took his daughters to see Barbie and his son got to see Bob the Builder. As you can see in the picture, the girls look like they're having a great time in front of the wall of Barbies!  While you are visiting, make a weekend of it and stay with us in our newly renovated hotel in downtown Indianapolis.  We offer different family-friendly Indianapolis hotel packages that you can reserve to see our magnificent Indianapolis Zoo, or go shopping in the Circle Centre Mall, which has plenty of stores, a movie theater and great restaurants and is only a block and a half away.

Guess what?  Race season is just around the corner!  There are three races this season: The Indianapolis 500 (The Greatest Spectacle in Racing), the Brickyard 400 (NASCAR) and the Red Bull Indianapolis MotoGP.

As a newly renovated hotel in Indianapolis, we are happy to offer rooms and rates during the Indy 500.  Our Indianapolis group travel deals are great for your group if you need ten rooms or more.  The Hilton Garden Inn Indianapolis Downtown is the northmost Hilton hotel in downtown, making it the Hilton hotel nearest the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

For group rates and Indianapolis hotel reservations information, please contact Camille Lauer, Corporate Sales Manager at clauer@fhginc.com or 317.405.5710.

Looking for something for the whole family to do in Indy?  Although this event isn't until September, it's something to plan for!  The 29th O'Reilly Auto Parts 4-Wheel Jamboree Nationals will take place September 17, 18 and 19 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.  It's a fun 4x4 event the entire family can enjoy!  The event includes enthusiasts who come from all over to display their 4x4 trucks and race them the whole weekend.  There's vendors and sponsors there to visit as well.

You should check it out!  Of course, you know I'll recommend you make a weekend out of it and enjoy the rest of what Indy has to offer, which is quite a bit!  There might be a concert at the Murat Centre or a Colts home game at Lucas Oil Stadium.  Being one of the hotels near Indianapolis Speedway, you could take a few hours to tour the Hall of Fame Museum.

If you need Indianapolis hotel reservations while visiting, we have discount hotel rates for the 4-Wheel Jamboree online.  If you visit the event website, you'll find a great hotel deal for our newly renovated Indianapolis hotel!

Now that we are on the other side of the process of making us the most newly renovated hotel in downtown Indy, I can share the green processes we used to lessen the impact to the environment. While we were able to incorporate several practices and introduce several products that were eco friendly, we also ran into several challenges that kept us from implementing everything we wanted to do with regard to this topic. So any suggestions of what we can do moving forward would be greatly appreciated.

Any time you do a renovation you have to balance what you need to do and what you want to do.   Here’s our scorecard:

1.        We were able to donate about 16,000 square feet of carpet and padding to another business.

2.       That which we weren’t able to donate, due to condition or lack of interest, we sent to Kruse Carpet Recycling Center. This amounted to about 51,000 square feet of carpet and padding

3.       We refurbished and reupholstered out common area seating on the second floor landings rather than replace the entire furniture piece as the frame was still in very good shape

4.       We were able to utilize Sherwin Williams Harmony line of zero VOC paint for all accent painting done in the main lobby and in the elevator landings on each floor, and in the restaurant. 

5.       Much of our fabric in our new guestroom and lobby seating was made with 100% recycled fibers.

6.       Any plastic or cardboard packaging that came with the new furniture was recycled this amounted to a tremendous amount of cardboard and the single stream recycling option from Waste Management made this a easy process and they were very helpful in working with us to remove the tremendous amount of cardboard that came with the packaging of our new guestroom chairs, lobby furniture, and restaurant seating. 

7.       We introduced dimmable CFL fluorescent bulbs into our restaurant area, and have experimented with LED lighting solutions in our lobby. To date the LED lighting solution does not deliver on adequate illumination in the lobby and we are told in about 3-4 months a satisfactory LED lighting will be available to replace a 250w flood lamp, which is our primary lighting source for the lobby. We are anxious to seeing this work.

I guess most important of all we were able to demonstrate to our management design company that several low cost/no cost sustainable solutions are available with a project like this and hopefully we can prod other hotels to take some of these same steps.

The Hilton Garden Inn Indianapolis Downtown is the most newly renovated hotel in Indianapolis downtown.  These changes make us one of the best hotels near Indianapolis Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium.  As of today all projects are complete. The project required some great coordination by the housekeeping, maintenance, and front desk staffs to ensure that our guest service did not suffer during the renovation. We accomplished this by keeping any work well away from any guests that might be staying in the hotel at the time this work was completed.  The results of the renovation are terrific.  The designer took our comments about ensuring our desire to continue giving great hotel accommodations Indianapolis.

Already we are getting very positive feedback from frequent guests about the enhancements made to the décor as well as our conversion to the GSS bedding system. In addition to replacing the carpeting throughout the entire building, we added a new soft seating chair and ottoman that compliments the existing décor as well as being a comfortable place to watch the big game on our LG flat panel televisions. 

I am by no means a great photographer, and these photos don't do the changes justice.  The most dramatic change is to our lobby and restaurant .   As an important historic hotel of Indianapolis, we had to ensure that the changes were in keeping with the great flavor of the Fletcher Trust Building.  The new colors compliment the historic flavor of the building while adding a new design element . The restaurant design enhancements have opened up the area to a more relaxed atmosphere. Whereas the feel of the restaurant was classic and established, maybe even a little boring before, the new semicircular booths, additional flat panel TVs, and lighting enhancements give the area a trendier atmosphere that is more fun to hang out in.

Let me know what you think, or better yet stop in and see for yourself. 

Celebrate the Big Game Downtown with the Hilton Garden Inn! What better place to be than in the heart of downtown Indianapolis while the Indianapolis Colts face off against the New Orleans Saints! Check out this great Indianapolis hotel deal: Enjoy deluxe accommodations in our newly renovated hotel and breakfast for two for only $99 on Sunday, February 7. If you want to bring a couple more people to share the room, we will include breakfast for four for only $109!

Our Great American Grill and bar will be open for dinner to serve up some tasty food and drinks while you watch the game in the grill or have room service delivered to your guest room. If you want to bring your own food and drinks to your room, all guest rooms include a complimentary microwave and refrigerator.

There’s nothing wrong with a little competition…chat it up with your friends, Tweet scores and update Facebook while watching the game by using our complimentary wired and wireless high-speed internet in your guest room, our lobby or bar and grill!

You can also make a weekend out of it; these special rates are available Friday through Sunday that weekend. The Nuclear Cowboyz freestyle motocross riders will be downtown on Saturday, February 6. Being one of the hotels near Lucas Oil Stadium, you can there in a matter of minutes.

Call us today at 317.955.9700 and ask for “The Big Game” rate! Or go to our website to reserve your room online by entering group code GAME.

See you at the Hilton Garden Inn for the Big Game!! GO COLTS!!

The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is proud to present the Duke Energy Yuletide Celebration!  A time-honored tradition complete with tap dancing Santas and flying reindeer, these shows are not to be missed.  December 4 is the opening weekend at Hilbert Circle Theatre downtown Indianapolis on Monument Circle, a two minute walk from our historic hotel.

Keeping with our tradition, we are proud to once again partner with the ISO and WFYI to offer two incredible Indianapolis hotel packages!  The first hotel package, Yuletide, Shop & Stay, is valued at almost $400 and includes:

• Hotel accommodations at the Hilton Garden Inn Indianapolis Downtown,
• Two main floor tickets to the Yuletide Celebration,
• One year membership to WFYI, breakfast for two, 
• A $25 Simon Malls Visa Gift Card and
•  A gift bag with shopping coupons and goodies from WFYI!

The second hotel package, Yuletide, Stay & SAVE, is valued at almost $350 and includes:

• Accommodations at our three star hotel downtown Indianapolis,
• Two 2nd mezzanine tickets to the Yuletide Celebration,
• One year membership to WFYI,
• Breakfast for two and
• A special holiday surprise gift!

We have a great cause we need your help with.  Nic Nihiser, a marketing executive at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was hit on his bicycle on Saturday, September 19 while riding home.  Fox 59 Video  As one of the hotels near Indianapolis Speedway, we are supporting Nic on his road to recovery.

Friends and family are holding a spaghetti dinner for him on October 10 from 4-7:30 at Decatur Intermediate School located at 5650 Mann Road Indianapolis.  Donations for spaghetti, paper goods, salad, dressing, Parmesan cheese and help setting up are appreciated.  Donating directly is also appreciated through PayPal by using the email address thefightfornicnihiser@yahoo.com.

Local businesses, friends, family and others are providing and seeking donations to auction off at the dinner.  All proceeds will benefit Nic and his family in his recovery.  You can follow his progress and learn more about how to help on the Facebook page The Fight for Nic Nihiser.  Our Indianapolis hotel will be donating one overnight stay with breakfast for two to be auctioned off at the dinner.