July 12, 2026
Here's a question worth asking any frequent traveler: outside of the room itself, what actually decides whether a hotel stay was good?
Not the lobby art. Not the pillow menu. For an awful lot of us it comes down to two things: could I get a real workout in, and was there somewhere decent to land afterward — a bar worth sitting at, whether that's to close a deal, meet a colleague, or just unwind with something better than a minibar beer.
A fitness center can be a proper floor with a rack, heavy dumbbells, and room to move — or two treadmills wedged into a converted guest room. A lobby bar can be the best room in the neighborhood, or a counter that closes at nine. The booking sites won't tell you which one you're getting. Their star ratings average the bed, the breakfast, the front desk, and the parking garage into one number that answers none of your actual questions.
So we built the thing we wanted: an app where travelers score every hotel on exactly those two dimensions.
Every hotel in Curls & Cocktails gets a Gym score (1–5 dumbbells), a Bar score (1–5 martini glasses), and an Overall. Rating takes under thirty seconds — slide the dumbbell, slide the martini, done. Add photos of the gym and the bar so the next traveler can see the weight rack (or the sad treadmill closet) with their own eyes.
One promise we take seriously: search results are hotels. Not vacation rentals, not short-term listings gaming their category. When you're choosing between the Marriott and the Kimpton downtown, that's the choice we show you.
Search any city and read every score without signing up. An account — Sign in with Apple, one tap — is only needed to post your own ratings, build your travel log, and follow travelers whose taste in gyms and bars you trust.
Curls & Cocktails is out now on iPhone. If your ideal trip involves a Negroni in the evening and a heavy squat in the morning, this is your app.