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.

A Quirky Hotel List

Gamirasu Cave Hotel

HotelsCombined.com has released a list of the 10 quirkiest hotels in the world and, much to my surprise, it includes a hotel I’ve stayed in.

The Gamirasu Cave Hotel in Ayvali, Turkey, is third on the list. I didn’t really find it all that quirky when I stayed there in 2008, but these lists tend to be pretty subjective, anyway.

The rooms at the Gamirasu are dug into the soft rock of Cappadocia, where people have lived in caves for thousands of years. It’s a beautiful place and a great value, plus the breakfast buffet is fabulous. Quirky or not, I highly recommend it.

As for the Jumbo Hotel in a grounded 747 in Stockholm or the Alcatraz Hotel in a former jail in Kaiserslautern, Germany, I’ll let you know what I think if I ever get there.

Travelzoo Stockpiles Travel Deals

When you confront the question of where to travel for an outrageously cheap vacation, Travelzoo may have the answer.

Travelzoo specializes in travel deals the way Overstock specializes in remaindered merchandise. Every day the site adds new bargains: reduced hotel rates, last-minute cruises, airfare sales and discounted vacation packages.

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Kayak Makes Airfare Searches Flexible

There are plenty of Web sites where you can search for the best airfares, but my favorite is Kayak.

Habit has something to do with this, no doubt. Kayak was among the first fully featured metasearch engine for airfares. And it remains among the strongest, particularly for flights originating in the United States.

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Airfarewatchdog: An Essential Site For Budget Travel

I’m preparing a presentation on the five best Web sites for budget travel, and it’s not easy to choose them. I use dozens of  sites to search for bargains, and they all have their good points.

But there’s no way that I could leave Airfarewatchdog.com off the list. At its core is a powerful database of the lowest fares from airports around the United States and Canada to destinations both domestic and foreign. Just go to the home page and type in your airport’s city or code and you’ll get a list of bargain fares.

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The Value Of TripAdvisor

I’m preparing a presentation on the five most valuable Web sites for bargain travelers, and one of them is the hotel review site TripAdvisor.

I’m well aware of the controversy about the reliability of the reviews that TripAdvisor aggregates. No less an authority than Arthur Frommer has been leading the charge, criticizing TripAdvisor’s response to false reviews on its site. He and others, including travel ombudsman and blogger Chris Elliott, have raised reasonable questions about fraud and manipulation of reviews, questions that ought to be answered. 

And yet, despite these problems, TripAdvisor has accomplished something revolutionary. It has empowered the travel consumer to share experiences and to point the collective finger (whichever finger seems appropriate) at hotels that rip travelers off. The callous and casual exploitation of the stranger in town, an unfortunate tradition over the centuries, has been suddenly set back on its heels, thanks to the power of crowd-sourcing and the Internet. No fleabag hotel on this planet is safe from TripAdvisor.

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Dirtiest Hotel List Released

When is a hotel bargain not such a bargain? When your room is filthy, for sure.

TripAdvisor has released its list of the dirtiest hotels in the United States and the rest of the world per its visitors’ reports. The reviews make entertaining reading, for example: “Do not stay in this decrepit facility unless you’re homeless! Even then, I would try to find a refrigerator box first.”

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New Blog: Fun With Carbs

Leeanne Griffin

My former colleague and very good friend Leeanne Griffin has started a wonderful new blog called Fun With Carbs.

Leeanne is an accomplished and open-minded cook, an adventurous and knowledgeable eater, and a lively, talented and entertaining writer.

Leeanne also likes to travel. That’s her at left, hiding behind a big glass of white wine on her recent honeymoon on the Greek island of Santorini.

Please check out the blog. And get a plastic cover for your keyboard because her food photos will make you drool.

Terminal Man: 40 Cities, 30 Days, No Hotels

Who would try to fly to 40 cities in 30 days on a one-month JetBlue pass without ever staying in a hotel? His name is Brendan Ross, aka Terminal Man, and you can read about his adventures on Wired’s Autopia blog. Just by attempting this he proves himself to be way tougher than the average travel blogger. I bow to him.

Blogging From The Tracks

If you don’t have enough blogs to read, have a look at Derailed: One Man’s Story Of His Life On (And Off) The Rails. It’s by Bobby, an Amtrak conductor, a keen observer of the human condition and a good writer to boot.