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.

Tax brings the total to $43.87 for a room with a king bed and sleep sofa, with a maximum occupancy of four people. A room with two queen beds and a sofa bed, holding up to five people, costs $10 more.

The rooms are slightly larger than average and there’s a sort of half-wall between the bed and the sitting area with the sofa. Each room also has a mini refrigerator and a microwave. But I’d argue that these are not really suites in the strictest sense.

A breakfast buffet is included and the shuttle to the Disney park is free. Reviews on TripAdvisor are generally quite favorable.

You’ll need to book through the Travelzoo link, or use the code TZO on the Marriott site.

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?

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.

There is a great division of opinion on the message boards attached to a recent story on this subject by Roger Wu at USA Today. Most people seem to agree on one thing, though. If hotels give you the option to forego housekeeping services, they should also give you a discount.

Some do. Many others pass off the housekeeping cutbacks as a “green” initiative to spare the environment by cutting back on energy-intensive activities such as washing and vacuuming. There’s less stress on the environment, the hotel saves money and the guest feels virtuous. Everybody wins!

Except the housekeeping staff, of course. The underpaid housekeepers will see their hours and perhaps benefits cut and they’ll end up with much dirtier rooms to clean when a guest checks out after five days without housekeeping.

So when we opt in or out of housekeeping services, let’s keep in mind that the housekeepers will still have to clean the room when we leave. And they still deserve tips.

Priceline deals are trade-offs, and the first trade-off involves time and money. You put in some some time, Priceline saves you some money.

It’s not brain surgery, rocket science or even complex math, but Priceline is a sophisticated system that pays off only if bidders understand the fundamentals. There are levels of bidding strategies, and every hotel room “bargain” comes with enormously important qualifiers and disclaimers.

Ignorance about any of the fine print is a serious risk.

Need to guarantee a king bed instead of two queens (or vice versa), or ensure that you get a pet-friendly (or pet-free) hotel? Then Priceline isn’t for you: The company very clearly cautions that successful bidders have no control over such details.

A percentage of customers report feeling cheated, even when they’re clearly expecting things that Priceline said up front it can’t promise. If you win a bid for Nov. 3 to 9, can you later extend it to Nov. 10? Priceline’s website says “yes” … but adds “keep in mind that the rate available may not be the same as what you paid originally and availability is not guaranteed.” Yet some people assume availability IS guaranteed:

Others complain about getting two queens rather than a king, or a king instead of two queens – or about hotel “resort fees” that are added after the bid is accepted. Yet these, too, are concerns that Priceline warns about up front.

Thetravelinsider.com gives an solid, easy-to-read overview of the whole system: It’s a “must” for smart newcomers to Priceline.

And if you’re following that guidance, then you’ll be checking in occasionally at betterbidding.com and biddingfortravel.com. Once in a while, that will pay off with an extra bonus.

For weeks, I’ve been bidding up to the $65-$68 range for a 4-star hotel in San Antonio with no success. This little notice solved that, and got me an even better price. This “$50 bonus cash” is a great (but limited-time) deal for previous Priceline bidders. It let me bid $70 a night and pay just $60 a night – an offer that the San Antonio Hyatt Regency took me up on. (Overall savings for a three-night stay look to be 65 percent – a remarkable deal even with Priceline).

FYI: If you’re eligible for the $50 bonus cash deal, know that you don’t need to sign up for the Priceline VISA card. That offer comes up on a screen when you bid using the “$50 bonus cash” link, and it may appear to be related. But you can just skip past it.

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.

Use your laptop or smart phone — or call a friend back home to check in for you. It may not be necessary to print the boarding passes at that time, but if it is, your friend can just throw them away. When you arrive at the airport, you can print boarding passes from your airline’s kiosks, whether passes have already been printed by your friend or not.

In Las Vegas, you don’t even have wait in line for the airline kiosk. There are machines scattered throughout the terminals where you can print free boarding passes for any airline.

Yes, those are the same machines you find in many hotel lobbies, at least outside Las Vegas. But the standard practice of providing a means to print boarding passes at no charge, as a courtesy to customers, has no place in revenue-starved Las Vegas hotels, which have carried nickel-and-diming fees to the extreme.

Actually, it’s not nickels and dimes we’re talking about here. The MGM Grand wanted $6.50 to print my boarding passes, an outrageous fee for two pieces of paper and a little ink. The Orleans wanted $2.50 — still a good ten times a reasonable price. Sure, I can afford it. I just don’t enjoy feeling like a chump.

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.

The story explained that many hotels in the United States are allowed to operate without sprinklers because they were built before sprinkler systems were required. In many cases of fatal hotel fires, including one that killed four students in a motel outside Birmingham in January, a sprinkler system would have saved lives.

The story also described how the federal government requires its employees to stay in fire-safe hotels when they are on business trips, and that means buildings with more than three stories must have automatic sprinkler systems with sprinkler heads in each guest room. And it  provided a link to the U.S. Fire Administration Hotel/Motel Fire-Safety List, a database of hotels around the country that are certified fire-safe.

I’ve added that one to my bookmarks.

There’s another reason this issue catches my attention.  This week, my husband and I will be checking into the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, a name that is infamous in hotel fire history.

In 1980, a fire killed 87 people at the MGM Grand, which did not have sprinklers in guest rooms. That building is now Ballys, and a nearby building became the new MGM Grand.

Both hotels are now certified as fire-safe, with fully automatic sprinkler systems throughout, including in guest rooms. I feel better knowing that.

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.

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.

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.

It’s not just this room. The windows throughout the hotel are dirty enough, on the outside, to impair the view. There is no service or attendant at the pool. The concierge desk is understaffed and was vacant when we were looking for help.

I’m observing this but I’m not complaining, to the hotel management or to the world in general. The room and the common areas are very clean and, all told, the amenities are far more luxurious than what I’m used to at home. I put the bulb back in its socket and shrugged at the scrapes on the door. We’re very comfortable.

What I’m seeing, and no doubt you are, too, (unless you’re staying in the most high-end, expensive hotels) is the result of a sensible compromise that hotel managers are making about maintenance. Unable to keep rates high enough to support the highest standards, they have cut back where they believe guests will least resent it.

That’s how the real world works. Efficiency can be improved only so much. The insistence that you can do more with less and that diminished resources don’t reduce standards is just so much corporate propaganda. Less is not more. Less is less. 

That’s why we are paying a much lower rate than this hotel would have charged two years ago and it’s why we’re getting less for it. That’s the state of the economy today.

So I won’t expect the hotel to apologize for cutting corners. And I won’t expect it to apologize when improved demand permits it to raise its rates. Nor will I apologize for taking the lowest rate I can get. It’s all just business.

But I am concerned about one area where hotels seem to be cutting back — security. On this trip, we’ve seen rambunctious teens attending a prom commandeer elevators and refuse to let other guests on. And last night someone came down the hall, knocking on guest room doors. I was startled and disoriented enough to wake up with a girly shriek (not my usual mode of expression) that woke up my husband and perhaps a few of our neighbors.

These events weren’t very harmful in themselves. But if hotel security wasn’t able to prevent them, what else could get past them? Safety is one amenity that most of us are not willing to compromise.