June 11th, 2009, 7 Comments »
I flew to Toronto this week. One flight out, two flights (hello, bizarre sculpture in Calgary airport!) on the way back. While checking in at a terminal, uh, in the terminal, I glanced at the seat selection screen. There were plenty of other seats from which to choose. The seat next to me was empty on all three flights.
Julie was down at Granville Island today. It was a gorgeous day, and that place is usually teaming with tourists in the summer months. She was surprised how uncrowded the island was. She easily found parking.
We recently used Hotwire to book a four-star hotel in downtown Seattle for Gnomedex. The conference occurs over a weekend in August, surely a popular time of year for tourists visiting the city. We’re paying US $99 a night.
I know these are all isolated anecdotes, but they confirm what I’ve been reading over the past few months: fewer people are traveling shorter distances. Here’s some empirical evidence. Between March, 2008 and March, 2009, the Canadian Tourism Council reports an 11.5% reduction in the number of trips to and within Canada. That probably represents the entire profit margin for a lot of hotels, travel agencies and related services.
As a matter of curiosity, I checked which countries were showing the greatest decline in trips to Canada. The percentages reflect how many fewer visitors came in March, 2009 compared to March, 2008:
- United Kingdom - 24%
- Japan - 24%
- South Korea - 23%
- Mexico - 21%
Of course, most foreign visitors to Canada are from the US, where travel is only off 5.9% between March, 2008 and 2009.
In any case, I guess it’s all good news for the consumer, and pretty bad news for anybody in the travel industry.
7 Comments »
June 3rd, 2008, 17 Comments »
Julie and I are musing about rewarding ourselves after an insanely-busy-with-work summer with a week-long working vacation somewhere in BC, Washington, Oregon or Hawaii. We’re thinking mid to late September, and we’d spend a lot of the time finishing up this marketing book we’re writing. So, you know, we need a nice room.
Ideally, it would be outside of any major city, tranquil and luxurious (though probably no more than $300 a night). Bonus points for proximity to wilderness for a bit of hiking or kayaking. As an example, the Long Beach Lodge would definitely qualify. So would the Wickanninish Inn, if their rates weren’t quite so crippling.
We’ve received a couple of great suggestions (including a vote for the north shore of Kauai), but I thought I’d crowd-source this badboy. Where have you stayed in the Pacific Northwest (uh, plus Hawaii) that meets these criteria?
17 Comments »
March 14th, 2008, 2 Comments »
Here’s something I didn’t know about hotels. Halfway through my stay at the Sheraton Wall Centre here in Vancouver, I decided to extend my stay by one night. Today I went up to my room, but couldn’t get in (the little lock light flashed red, not green).
This happens all the time to me–I think I have a wonky magnetic field that kills access cards. When I went downstairs to get a replacement, however, I learned that it was because I hadn’t received a new card when I extended my stay.
I asked, and I gather that the card knows how long it’s valid for. That makes complete sense, but I’d never actually thought through it.
I know that’s fairly lame, but what can I tell you? It’s been a busy week.
2 Comments »
March 4th, 2008, 7 Comments »
I’m going to be in Chicago for a speaking gig in June. We’re adding a couple of days on either side to have a little working holiday.
I’ve never been to the Windy City before. For those who have (and especially those who live there), where would you recommend we stay? I’m not looking for specific hotel recommendations (though I’ll take those). I’m more interested to know what part of town we should stay in.
For an American city like this, we’re your typical cultural tourists–museums, galleries, walking around cool neighbourhoods and the like. Any suggestions?
I promise not to say “da Bears” or “da Bulls” when I’m there.
7 Comments »
January 4th, 2008, 6 Comments »
We have successfully touched down in the Palmeraie, a resorty suburb of Marrakesh. Thanks to LuxuryLink, we’re staying at Jnane Tamsna, a luxurious, garden-filled sprawling compound of lovely Moroccan houses.
I had mixed feelings about staying in the Palmeraie instead of the middle of Marrakesh, but we’ll be living in the dead centre of Essaouira’s medina for two and a half months. I figured we could enjoy a little touristy luxury for a few days. Plus, this place is only about a quarter-full, so we pretty much have the gardens and heated pools to ourselves. It’s gorgeous.
Of All the Gin Joints
We landed in Casablanca, and overnighted in Morroco’s grimy commercial centre. I’ve never much cared for big cities in the developing world (the exception being Havana), and I wasn’t particularly enamoured of Casablanca.
The exception was the extraordinary Hassan II mosque. I gather non-Muslims are usually not permitted inside mosques, so we jumped at the chance for a tour. Maybe they made an exception for this mosque to recover expenses–it cost half a billion dollars to build. From Wikipedia:
Built on reclaimed land, almost half of the surface of the mosque lies over the Atlantic water. This was inspired by the verse of the Qur’an that states “the throne of God was built on the water”. Part of floor of this facility is glass so worshippers can kneel directly over the sea; above, lasers shine at night from the top of the minaret toward Mecca
By a significant margin, it’s the biggest religious building (nay, complex) I’ve ever seen. It can accommodate 25,000 worshippers (20,000 men on the floor, 5,000 women on enclosed balconies). The main worshipping space is mind-bogglingly enormous–it defies description. I took some photos, but they don’t satisfactorily portray the experience.
Riding on the Marrakesh Express
The following morning we took the three-hour train trip down to Marrakesh. The landscape changed from farmland to red rock terrain. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit how much I was reminded of Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet. Though, of course, I’m pretty sure those scenes were shot in Tunisia.
Morroco seems like an ideal culinary nation for me. The food is flavourful but not particularly spicy. They eat a lot of poultry, and I’ve always preferred cous-cous to rice. Plus, Morocco is mostly a dry nation, so restaurants offer a rich variety of non-alcoholic drinks and juices.
Here’s our nascent Morocco photo set on Flickr, if anybody’s interested. More updates as events warrant and web access permits.
6 Comments »
November 12th, 2007, No Comments »
I thought this was a clever variation on fancy sparkling (or ‘fizzy’, as they seem to prefer here) water bottles:
As you hopefully can see, there’s a little window through the front label showing a pastoral scene on the inside of the back label. It’s not earth-shattering, but a little change that Julie and I noticed and remarked on.
For extra points, they could go the Jones Soda route and feature, uh, drinker-generated pastoral photos there instead of that cheesy water colour.
No Comments »
November 5th, 2007, 3 Comments »
As we occasionally do, Julie and I spent a couple of hours today working in the lovely bar at the Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz. I think it’s the only five star hotel on Gozo, and despite its peculiar location (there are no views of the sea), it’s quite posh.
I wasn’t using the web, but I happened to visit the hotel’s portal page for its wifi service. Here it is:
That looks pretty weak, doesn’t it? Why does a five-star hotel, with its spa smelling of sandalwood and lavendar, it’s beautifully-tiled pools and gorgeously-appointed rooms, have such a crappy-looking login page? The Kempinski isn’t unique in this peculiar disconnect–I’ve seen worse in plenty of four and five-star hotels.
It’s a tiny thing, but swish hotels aspire to get the tiny things right. The five-star devil, after all, is in the details. On the other hand, at least I wasn’t presented with an image of some kind of fruitophile.
Incidentally, I took that screenshot with a great little OS X program that Monique tipped me off on. It’s called Paparazzi, and all it does is make a full-length screenshot of any URL you enter. It saves you the trouble of stitching screenshots together.
3 Comments »
September 25th, 2007, 8 Comments »
As I’ve mentioned, we’re planning on spending two or three months in Morocco in the new year. We plan to visit a couple of towns to see what we like, and then find some medium-term, Internet-enabled accommodation.
When we first arrive, we’ll obviously need somewhere to stay. We turned once again to Luxury Link, an auction site for luxury travel (I have a soft, slightly rotten spot for lovely, unusual lodgings). We were the successful and sole bidders on four nights at the awesome-looking Jnane Tamsna, a guest house in the Palmeraie on the outskirts of Marrakesh.
As the only bidders, we paid the minimum price for Jnane Tamsna–about CAN $950 for four nights, breakfast every day, one dinner, a guide for a half-day and sundry other tidbits. The website put the retail value of the package at $2500. Even if they’re padding those numbers, that’s still a fantastic deal.
We got a similar killer deal on Luxury Link for the mind-buggeringly luxurious Boscolo Dei Dogi Hotel (some photos of our room) when we visited Venice.
Minds Change, Should Post Titles?
When I originally booked our first trip with Luxury Link, I was pretty unhappy with the auction system, which differs from eBay’s. My subsequent happy experiences with Luxury Link has ameliorated those concerns, and a while ago I updated my earlier post to say so.
I’ve exchanged a few friendly emails with the folks at Luxury Link, who more or less asked me to change the title of that post, because of its SEO juice. I declined, but ever since I’ve wondered if I should.
Should I modify the post title to reflect my current thinking, or should blog posts remain archival reflections of my thinking on a given day in my past? I have written positively about Luxury Link since then, but haven’t knocked off that first post. It’s a trivial little test case (less trivial for the SEO-sensitive owners of Luxury Link), I suppose, and an issue I’ll encounter more often the older my blog gets.
What would you do?
UPDATE: I decided to change the title of that post to something more accurate, and reflect that in another update at the top of the post.
8 Comments »
August 1st, 2007, 3 Comments »
We just returned from our brief overnight trip to Comino and our stay at the Comino Hotel. The hotel is a bit old-school and tired–think the hotel from Dirty Dancing, except it’s 1970 and nobody’s done any upgrades since the big dance number. Still, it’s totally adequate for a couple of nights.
Interestingly, the guests seemed to be 80% German. I’m not sure why this was, because that’s certainly not true of the tourists I see on Gozo–the majority of them seem to be British. Happily, the hotel only seemed about half-full, so there were no ugly incidents involving sun loungers.
This morning we got up at 7:30am and walked over to Comino’s famed Blue Lagoon. We had the place entirely to ourselves for about an hour, until a few Maltese folks came by to set up a brigade of sun loungers and umbrellas. It was quite remarkable to be in this beautiful spot alone. The water is as clear and crystal blue as it looks in the photo.
But that’s been the trick on Malta. Get somewhere before 10:00am, and the place is empty. This has proved true at other famous locales like the Azure Window, as well as cultural and historical sites. After 10:00 AM, though, the tour buses and boats start rolling up.
We didn’t stay, but during the rest of the day the Blue Lagoon gets assaulted by tourists–these two photos give you a sense of just how many people and boats turn up.
I’m a travel snob. I like to explore when (and sometimes where) people aren’t. It’s nice to know I can still do that if I’m willing to get up a little early.
3 Comments »
June 8th, 2007, 2 Comments »
Speaking of hotels, I’ve always wondered about this: when you sign for something in a hotel, there appears to be no controls to confirm that you are, in fact, a guest at that hotel. It seems like anybody could walk in off the street, order a lobster, sign it to a random room, and take off. Does this happen, and how often?
I asked Chris–he left a comment on the aforementioned post–from Vacant Ready, a social network for hotel workers. Here’s his lengthy but informative reply:
Abuse happens a LOT (overall), and there isn’t always an easy fix.
Clearly the hotel in Budapest is relying on the judgement of their employees and the innate honesty of people(?) in their restaurant outlets. I’m not surprised to hear that, given the intrinsic need to trust that one’s guests will pay to receive hospitality. Obviously trust is the main ingredient that keeps the machine moving forward, and for the most part it works.
…not always though. I have seen all kinds of fraudulent behaviour throughout my hotel career…massive credit card fraud, restaurant “walk-outs”, plain old theft….and certainly people capturing names & room numbers and abusing the system. It’s a fact of life in the hospitality industry, and total losses through fraud are huge for the industry as a whole.
Servers in hotels are usually required to immediately match a room number with a name when accepting a charge posted to a guestroom, but it’s after the fact and can not always be rectified. Then you get guests who are honest, but you simply can’t ready the room number or the name!
When a guest checks into a hotel, the desk agent should never be saying a room number and name out loud together in case someone is listening in the lobby. Housekeeping room attendants have to also be careful never to leave their “assignments” in the open in case people glance at the sheet and capture that golden name & room number combo. Bellmen using radios have to be careful never to mention a room number & name in the same breath….because someone could always be listening.
To your point, anyone can theoretically eat in a restaurant and sign any old name and room number, and it might get missed by the server. It shouldn’t, but it absolutely happens. It’s the “Service” vs. “Security” quandry that is very real in the hospitality industry. We need to protect our assets and collect money for services rendered, but we also need to show gracious hospitality or we’ll lose customers. Manditory credit cards or pre-payment for hotel rooms has helped a lot from the rooms side, but F&B definitely gets abused.
Hotel law in North America is guided by the Innkeeper’s Act, which was developed based on a similar Act in the U.K. The document specifically states that hotel guests and restaurant patrons have a fundamental right to receive “hospitality”, as long as they 1) “Seem” to have the ability to pay, 2) Do not pose an obvious threat to the security of fellow guests & 3) Are not presenting signs of a communicable disease (the plague maybe?). As you can see, these are pretty vague and are heavily in favour of protecting the guest. When the Act was initiated, hotels were safe havens where travellers could find peace & not to be robbed or killed on the road. That’s where the tone of the Act began.
Well, there you go. You do, as the idiom goes, learn something every day.
2 Comments »
