Denver’s Inflatable Hovering Hotel Room Costs $50K

Have you ever wondered what a $50,000 a night hotel room would be like? Well, one hotel in Denver is giving travelers the chance to find out — though they might a little surprised by what they discover.

Expecting a heavenly mattress? Too bad, because all this pricy pad offers is an inflatable bed for your weary body. Dreaming of unwinding in a jacuzzi in your marble-clad bathroom? Sorry to burst your bubble but you’ll be doing your business in a chemical toilet instead.

Completely confused yet? Well, despite the lack of amenities, it turns out that people are willing to cough up wads of cash for the sake of novelty. In this case, The Curtis Hotel in Denver is offering a room that’s hoisted 22 feet up in the air, perched on top of a van. The room — which is entirely inflatable — is a temporary space that was designed as part an arts festival.This isn’t the first strange hotel room to be dreamed up by artists and designers. We found several other bizarre places to lay your head down for the night.

  • Weymouth Beach in England opened the world’s first hotel made entirely out of sand a few years ago. Guests were able to book a stay at the hotel for as little as $15 until the hotel was washed away by the ocean. Even the beds were made of sand, with hotel operators warning visitors that the sand “gets everywhere.”
  • At the Tubo Hotel in Mexico, travelers can make themselves at home in an old drain pipe. The recycled concrete pipes, which were previously used in sewers, are decked out with queen beds so you don’t actually have to feel like you’re sleeping in the gutter.
  • In Belgium last year, travelers could stay in a hotel room designed around the top of a 100-year-old clock tower. The room, which hovered 75 feet above the busy streets of Ghent, was designed to give guests an intimate perspective on the city’s history. With a massive clock right up against your bed, we’re guessing you don’t need to request a wake up call when you’re staying in this room.

Tell us, what’s the strangest hotel room you’ve slept in?

Galley Gossip: 9 Safety Tips For New Flight Attendants (And Solo Travelers)

Credit: Heather Poole

1. “The Gift of Fear,” by Gavin De Becker, should be required reading for all men and women, especially for those of us who travel, particularly for women who travel alone. I’ve recommended this book to more flight attendants and passengers than anything thing else over the years. It’s saved my life more than once.

2. Skip the first floor. They’re easier to break into. That’s why you’ll never find a flight attendant below the second floor in a hotel. There’s a reason for that. It’s in our hotel contract.

3. Leave the lights and television on when you’re not in the room. Put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. It gives the appearance that someone is occupying the room, so no one will break in.

4. Stay Healthy: Never leave home without a small antibacterial spray. A mini bottle of vodka works just as well. Hit up the remote, the light switches, doorknobs and taps. You don’t want to get sick while you’re stuck at a less than desirable layover hotel.

5. Walk with intent. Walk down the street like you have a place to be, like you know where you’re going and need to get there quickly. Do that and people will leave you alone.

6. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you’re walking alone and feel like someone is following you, tell someone! If for some reason you feel scared and you’re all alone, share it with somebody! Trust your gut. Know that most people will help.

7. Treat your hotel key like a credit card. Keep it away from your cellphone. Don’t leave it out for everyone to see. Don’t say which room you’re in out loud when you’re discussing what time to meet down in the lobby. Ditch the paper sleeve it came in. This way if you lose your key you won’t have to worry about any uninvited visitors.

8.. Hide your personal information on your luggage tag. Turn it around so no one can read your name, address, phone number. This way you won’t get a surprise knock on your door – or a phone call on a day off at home from a stranger who knows you by name who’s still mad that all you had left was the pasta in first class.

9. Dress appropriately. You’ll probably live a lot longer if you wear the appropriate outfit in the appropriate neighborhood. Ladies, I’m talking heels. Short skirts. The idea is you want to blend in. You also want to be able to run if need be.

Hotel room price protection from familiar watchdog group

Travelers booking hotel rooms often use a variety of sources while trying to get the best price. Once satisfied that they have found the best price, they book it and forget it. What they don’t realize is that between booking and staying, the price may very well go down. A price drop might happen for a number of reasons and might be a limited-time offer too. Now, a new service tracks hotel pricing and automatically refunds the difference between what a traveler paid and the lower, sale price.

Tingo is the first hotel booking site that automatically rebooks hotel rooms at a lower price if the rate drops, and then automatically refunds the difference to travelers’ credit cards.

“Travelers could have saved millions last year had there been a simple system in place that automatically rebooked their rooms,” said Smarter Travel Media General Manager David Krauter in a release. “And that’s what Tingo does, by taking the gamble out of booking and refunding travelers’ money when rates drop.”

The deal is simple: Book a “Money Back” room and Tingo watches that room’s rate to see if it changes. If the price drops, Tingo rebooks that same room at the lower rate and refunds the difference to the booking credit card.

The process adds up to big numbers too. Using comScore Media Metrix for TripAdvisor, Inc. and its subsidiaries, Worldwide, January 2012, Tingo estimates that in 2011 alone, Americans could have saved nearly $314 million if they had had access to a site like this.

“It’s a no-brainer,” adds Krauter. “And just to put it in perspective, $314 million would book the $2,000 per night Penthouse at The London NYC, straight through for the next 350 years.”

If this all sounds a bit familiar, it is. Tingo is a sister site of Gadling favorite AirfareWatchdog, a site best known for tracking airline fares and notifying members when point-to-point fares become available that match what the member is willing to pay.



Flickr photo by Bob B. Brown

Mobiata introduces HotelPal 2.0 for the iPad



HotelPal
has long been on our “must carry” list of mobile applications – Instead of browsing individual hotel chain sites, or navigating non-mobile web sites, you can find, research and book rooms from right inside the app.

Until now, HotelPal was only available for Android and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Of course, you could use it on the iPad, but it wasn’t “made for” the iPad – until today.

In HotelPal 2.0, the app has become iPad native, which means gorgeous map based price searches, a new page-turning interface for hotel navigation and the ability to view side-by-side hotel listings.

And just like the previous version, HotelPal 2.0 is still free of charge. You’ll find download links for the various versions at Mobiata.com.

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Lost & Found: Top 10 items left behind in hotel rooms

What’s the most commonly left item from guests in hotel rooms? It’s not the missing peanuts from the mini-bar.

Hotel guests are notoriously walking away from some of their most private possessions when they check out of hotels, but just how personal are the items? You’d be surprised. Following a check of its 31 UK hotels’ lost property departments, Novotel revealed the strange objects left behind in hotel rooms by its guests during 2010.

Because of the amount of items housekeeping has picked up in Novotel rooms, the hotel has launched a new online boutique novotelstore.com so people can purchase everything from the bed to the art on the walls, just in case they want to go home with something different.While mobile phone chargers and underwear top the list of most commonly left behind items, amongst the more unusual items guests forgot to take with them when they checked out were a car keys, wigs, musical instruments and dinner suits. The survey of Novotel hotels reveals the top ten items guests most commonly leave behind as:

1. Mobile phone chargers
2. Underwear
3. False teeth and hearing aids
4. Odd shoes and items of clothing
5. Car keys and house keys
6. Toiletries bags
7. Adult toys
8. Electric toothbrushes
9. Laptops
10. Jewelry

We want to know: What items have you left behind in hotel rooms? Did you get them back?

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