When your hotel can go from being filled with guests attending the Super Bowl to filled with guests attending Mardi Gras (and a few diehards who attended both) and still provide outstanding service with a genuine smile, you know you are staying at the right place. I arrived at the Sheraton on the Saturday of Mardi Gras weekend, stayed through Fat Tuesday and departed on Wednesday -- and I could not have been happier with my experience at the hotel or in New Orleans. Having recently completed an amazing top to bottom $50 million renovation to coincide with its 30th anniversary, the hotel looked fabulous -- from the French Quarter courtyard inspired lobby to my spacious King Room with amazing views of the Mississippi River. I was glad to find that the renovation also included an overhaul and expansion of the hotel's fitness center, which ranks among the best non-resort hotel fitness centers I have ever used. With its Canal Street location, the Sheraton is steps from the French Quarter (i.e. the gay bars), the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, The National World War II Museum and New Orleans' famed street cars that can have you strolling in the Garden District in minutes. And I know, because I visited them all. For my fellow LGBT travelers, will be pleased to know that the Sheraton New Orleans is a gay-friendly TAG Approved (www.tagapproved.com) property. TIP:Getting a room on the Club Level (floors 42-49) is worth the extra cost for the view, free internet and exclusive use of the private Club Lounge where they can enjoy complimentary continental breakfast daily and evening hors d'oeuvres.

Starwood Corporation prides (no pun intended) itself on a policy of diversity and inclusiveness recognizing that a safe workplace improves worker happiness and efficiency. Or does it? While this may be Starwood's corporate policy, in the field at the Sheraton New Orleans, which is under the direction of John Jiminez, they have chosen to follow Louisiana's more Laissez-Faire work practices rather than the corporate path outlined by Starwood policies and supported by thousands of gay employees worldwide. In the case of Christopher Wood, a 40 year old food and beverage manager at Starwood's Sheraton New Orleans property. Mr. Wood, a long-term and highly respected manager at the property, found out in March that his husband's mother was dying of Ovarian cancer. A short trip home to say goodbye was transformed from something necessary and beautiful into an ugly beast with fangs set on his career. Upon returning to duty, he was called into his superior's office and berated for dereliction. After all this wasn't his mother, right? Then came the bombshell that brings everything into tight focus, Mr. Hamada asks Mr. Wood, "You think you are a doctor?", and pronounces that, "In my day, we would have been fired for this.' Fast forward one month: only three months after a particularly glowing employee review, Christopher Wood was fired. It should be noted by the reader that this family leave was approved in advance. The questions hang in the air all by themselves, don't they? The writer does not seek to answer these questions, but rather to turn a spotlight of integrity on this property, and calls Starwood to action in defense of it's gay employees and to live up to its policies of inclusion. It is just good business, after all.