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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Don’t Pay For Boarding Passes

It has become a pernicious habit of Las Vegas hotels to charge guests to print boarding passes for their return flights, but there’s no need to pay for that.

Sure, it’s a good idea to check in online well in advance of your flight, as a means to protect your seat. If you’re flying on a standard fare on Southwest, it’s critical to check in early if you want to get a good seat. The good news is that if you don’t have access to a printer, you can check in without printing the pass.

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Paying Attention To Hotel Fire Safety

Over the years, I’ve had to evacuate a hotel because of fire alarms at least three times that I can remember. None of those incidents involved a serious fire — the causes were along the lines of overheated coffeemakers —  but it might have made me think.

It didn’t, really. My fire safety precautions have consisted only of locating the stairways when I stay on a high floor and always having a small flashlight in my luggage.  I’ve never tried to find out when choosing or checking into a hotel whether it has sprinklers in the guest rooms. But after reading a recent Associated Press story on the subject, I’m going to pay a lot more attention to that detail.

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Midtown Manhattan Hotel: $129

Travelzoo has a very nice deal this summer on what looks like a pretty decent hotel in midtown Manhattan. The $129 rate for the Hotel Thirty Thirty comes out to $152 with all taxes, a very low rate indeed for midtown.

This rate must be booked by June 9 for stays between July 1 and Sept. 6, with some last-minute availability between June 17 and June 30. It applies Sunday through Thursday.

The reviews on Tripadvisor are generally favorable but include some complaints about the size of the rooms and the quality of the service. (Welcome to New York.) Keep in mind that those travelers reported paying, on average, twice as much as this special rate.

Waste Not The Hotel Toiletries

There’s some buzz gathering around an operation called Clean the World that collects leftover soap and shampoo from hotels and reprocesses them.

The recycled soap products are distributed to homeless shelters in the United States and to needy people in poor countries, where soap can save lives by halting the spread of infectious diseases.

You can help by sending leftover soap products you’ve accumulated, donating money and asking hotels to participate in the recycling program. The Clean the World Web site has more details.

Hotels Showing Wear And Tear

For the past 18 months or so I’ve been observing, in a clinical way, the effect of the severe recession on hotels.

We’re staying right now in an upscale hotel in downtown San Diego. Our room is very clean and nicely furnished, but when we arrived a lamp bulb was hanging loose in its socket. The bathroom door is very thoroughly scuffed and scratched on the inside. The mini-bar had been removed.

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