On the Wisdom of Running Away

My husband and I were staying at a very nice hotel in Boston last year (thank you, Priceline) when the power went out late at night.

The emergency lights came on and the phones were working, so we called the front desk. No worries, the desk clerk said, it was a scheduled test of the emergency generator. We should have been told about it at check-in but somebody forgot.

Reassured? Not entirely.

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Groupon Launches Travel Site

The new Groupon travel site has launched at groupon.com/getaways. The initial offers include a night at the Las Vegas Palms for $89 and a four-night stay at the swanky Lotus at Diamond Head in Honolulu for $500. I’m thinking the wildly successful Groupon model could become a powerful force in the travel industry.

Hankering For A Cave Breakfast

For some reason, I’m suddenly hankering for the breakfast buffet at the Gamirasu Cave Hotel in Ayvali, Turkey. The photo doesn’t do it justice:

The oranges were incredibly sweet, and so was the orange juice. There was also pure, fresh cherry juice.  Seriously. Cherry juice.

Momondo Adds Hotel Search

Momondo has added a hotel search function to its site, already home to an excellent airfare meta-search engine.

Momondo says the hotel search covers 450,000 hotels around the world and seeks out price comparisons across various hotel booking sites. Tnooz reviews it here.

I have used Momondo mainly to find air fares outside the United States, where it seems to do a better job than some of the U.S.-based search sites in finding good fares on small, regional airlines.  It will be interesting to see if the hotel search delivers the same advantage on foreign hotels.

Check Your Hotel Bill For Overcharges

I was looking yesterday at one of my credit card accounts online and I noticed a $24 charge from a nice boutique hotel in New York where I stayed recently on business.

My employer paid for the room, but as usual I had to hand over my own credit card at check-in for incidentals. Trouble is, there were no incidentals.

When I called to ask about the charge, the desk clerk told me it was for dry cleaning and put me through to the hotel accounting office, at which point I solemnly swore that I had ordered no dry cleaning. (Have a look at my wardrobe. It’s true.) The accounting representative said it might have been a mistake with the room number, and the hotel refunded the charge.

Maybe it was a mistake. And maybe it was a mistake when my husband was charged for parking at a hotel where he had arrived by taxi.  One hears so many similar stories that one must conclude the hotel industry has become rather mistake-prone of late.

The lesson here: check your hotel bill for overcharges, both accidental and otherwise.

Governments Jump On Rental Ban-Wagon

Laura Bly at USA Today has a story today about the trend toward banning short-term rentals of apartments, condos and houses in vacation areas.

Arthur Frommer has also been following this issue very closely on his blog.

New York, Chicago and Maui are restricting short-term rentals and many other local governments are considering similar measures. Ostensibly, the idea is to protect neighborhoods and their residents.

Of course, these measures also protect hotels. And they hurt middle-class families that can’t afford exorbitant rates for multiple hotel rooms in popular vacation areas.

Las Vegas Rates In Orlando

The SpringHill Suites Convention Center in Orlando is offering accommodation via Travelzoo at $39 a night through Sept. 30, excluding Sept. 2 and 3, and otherwise subject to availability.

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Why Ban Apartment Rentals To Tourists?

Arthur Frommer points out in a recent blog entry that there are initiatives afoot in Hawaii, New York City and France to ban short-term apartment rentals to visitors. 

And he asks: Is the motive to protect the residents and neighborhoods where apartments are rented, as most proponents claim, or is it to protect the hotel industry? Good question.

Certainly there are some places where hotel rates are beyond the means of middle-class travelers. My husband and I simply could not have paid the hotel rates in St. Petersburg, Russia, where we stayed in a pleasant (and rather highly fortified) apartment for a week.

If apartments could not be rented there, the results would be fewer visitors. And how would the rest of the businesses that tourists patronize — transit companies, restaurants, attractions, tour companies — react to that?

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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Careful Priceline Bidding Yields Bonus

Two things to know about bidding for hotel rooms on Priceline:
1) There’s no substitute for doing the homework;
2) Sometimes when you do the homework, you get a little bonus!
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