Hotel Housekeeping: Fee Or Discount?

What’s the difference between a fee for a service and a discount for not using it?

Not much but semantics. The hotel industry is moving toward a la carte room cleaning options, and it hardly matters whether we get a discount for opting out of housekeeping or pay a fee for opting in. The bottom line is the same.

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Hotels Reward Guests Who Do Without Housekeeping

Would you accept a $5 daily credit to do without housekeeping services during your next hotel stay?

Starwood Hotels reports that 8.5 percent of its guests choose to forego housekeeping in exchange for a $5 credit to hotel restaurants or 500 points in the loyalty program for each night, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Hotels are promoting this option as ecologically friendly because towels and linens don’t get washed and vacuum cleaners don’t get used. It’s also economically friendly – for the hotel — because housekeepers don’t get paid. The article cites an estimate that it costs a luxury hotel $22 a day to clean a  room.

So I’m not particularly inclined to take the bait on this one. I think I’d rather have the room cleaned and keep the housekeepers employed.

I also can’t help wondering how long it will be before this option becomes a perk and hotels start charging a cleaning fee.

NYT: Theft And Vandalism Mar Bike Rentals In Paris

I wrote this summer about the Bixi public bicycle rental program in Montreal. The New York Times has a piece about problems, particularly vandalism, with a similar program in Paris. The Times reports that nearly 80 percent of the Velib bikes in Paris have been stolen or damaged.

Southwest Introduces ‘Green’ Jet

Southwest Airlines is flying a jet refurbished with lightweight, recycled cabin materials from Dallas to Seattle today.

The Boeing 737, which Southwest calls  its “green plane,”  is 520 pounds lighter than the airline’s standard jet. It doesn’t sound like much — the equivalent of just a few hefty passengers — but it will save 10,000 gallons of fuel a year, and cause a corresponding drop in carbon emissions, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly announced at the airline’s Media Day in Dallas.

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Whale Was Already Dead When Hit By Cruise Ship

A fin whale impaled on the prow of the Sapphire Princess had been dead for five to seven days before the cruise ship hit it, the Vancouver Province reports.

The whale was pinned to the ship when it docked in Vancouver last month.

A juvenile fin whale was found dead last week on the bow of a cargo ship in the Port of Tacoma. Biologists believe that whale was killed by a collision with a ship, although possibly not the one it was found on, the News Tribune of Tacoma reported.

In January, Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas arrived at Puerto Montt, Chile, with a whale’s decomposed carcass caught in the prow. Biologists later said the whale was dead when the ship hit it.

Cruise Ship Docks With Whale Impaled On Bow

The Sapphire Princess docked in Vancouver on Saturday with a dead fin whale impaled on its bow. A necropsy has been completed, but the results still need to be analyzed, Canada Press reports. In January Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas arrived at Puerto Montt, Chile, with the carcass of whale caught in the prow. Biologists later said the whale was already dead when the ship hit it.

Watch Out For Fees With Montreal’s New Bike Rentals

Bixi bike station, Old Montreal.

Montreal has a cool new public bike rental service, but be very certain you understand the fees before you use it.

It would be very easy to believe from reading the explanation at the automated Bixi bike rental stations that $5 buys unlimited access to the bikes for 24 hours, with the first 30 minutes entirely free. In fact, many people have interpreted the information provided at the stations in just that way and have complained online about getting much higher charges on their credit card statements.

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Costa Rica Tops In Sustainable Happiness

Doña Margarita is 81 years old. She makes the best tortillas on Earth.

The people of Costa Rica live the longest, happiest, most ecologically sustainable lives on the planet, according to the Happy Planet Index formulated by a British research group, CNN reports.

The index doesn’t rank the happiest places on Earth, exactly. It combines the self-reported life satisfaction of a nation’s population with its ecological footprint and life expectancy to rate “the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens.”

I’ve been to Costa Rica many times, starting in the early 1990s, when my parents served in the Peace Corps there.  And I’m not surprised it came out on top. (The Dominican Republic came in second, and Latin America scored well, generally.)

(See my Costa Rica photo gallery.)

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Opposition Mounts To Shark Tours

Want to be lowered inside a cage into shark-filled waters? Me neither. Enough people are willing to pay for the experience to support two shark tour operations on the north shore of Oahu, but there’s a move afoot to shut them down, the Associated Press reports.

Thinking About Bikes And Trains

Alper Çuğun / http://alper.nl

I recently spent $1,500 on new brakes and tires for my Subaru, which refloated the fantasy I have long held under the surface reality of my suburban existence, the dream of life without a car.

In that life, I would ride a bike and trains. Also trolley cars, subways and buses. Maybe a scooter.

Today I’m nurturing that dream at the Connecticut Train Day symposium at Union Station in New Haven, where the topic is bicycling and commuter rail. Rail*Trains*Ecology*Cycling arranged the event, and provided some really good coffee.

Norman Garrick, director of the Center for Transportation and Urban Planning at the University of Connecticut, raised a lot of interesting ideas in an excellent slideshow:

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