Budget travel tip: Ask to use a hotel’s hospitality suite

by Amy Chen on

I often book red-eye flights in order to save money and to spend more time in my destination — without having to pay for an extra night’s hotel.

Depending on your destination, even after you officially check out, you may also be able to use a hotel’s hospitality suite to get cleaned up. I’ve had the best luck in Hawaii, where resorts seem the most sympathetic to people wanting to squeeze in extra beach time (and to people wanting to scrub off the sand before the flight home).

After checking out in the morning, I ask to leave my bags at the hotel, and then I either go off during the day for more sightseeing and eating, or I hang out on the resort property (with permission, of course).

Several years ago, I spent Labor Day weekend with my mom on the Big Island of Hawaii. Our flight was scheduled to leave at night, so we spent much of our departure day relaxing at the resort. Having joined a full-day Circle Island tour the day before — which required waking up at 6 a.m. — I was more than happy to do absolutely nothing but laze around the pool at the Hilton Waikoloa Village. In the afternoon, my mom participated in a water aerobics class, and I napped under the shade of a beach umbrella. We ate, read a bit, and went swimming.

When it was time to get ready to leave for the airport, we went back to the front desk and were given a key to a spare hotel room, where we could shower, change, and otherwise make ourselves presentable for the return flight. I felt refreshed and though few people ever are ready to leave Hawaii, it was a mellow way to end a mellow vacation.

Here are five ways to make the most of a hotel’s generosity:
5 Tips for Using a Hospitality Suite

1. Ask your hotel for permission to use the hospitality suite before you check out and before you jump in the pool or head to the beach. If for some reason the hotel is fully booked or has changed its policy, you don’t want to be caught soaking wet.

2. Make sure you keep a change of clothes with your day bag. You don’t want to have to ask the bellhop to retrieve your luggage and then dig around your suitcase with everything — and I mean everything — splayed out in the lobby.

3. The standard allotted time for using a hospitality suite seems to be 30 minutes. If there are two people who need to shower and otherwise beautify themselves, you may need to yell at the other person to hurry up. Or agree that the person who takes the least amount of time should go first.

4. It doesn’t hurt to leave a tip in the hospitality suite. The housekeeper does, after all, have to refresh the towels and toiletries.

5. Though I’ve yet to try this, I’m told that some hotels may let you use the spa facilities or showers if you arrive super early on a red-eye flight and your rooms aren’t ready until later that afternoon. Though many hotels graciously hold your bags until check-in time, I know I would especially appreciate having access to a shower if I land at 6 a.m. and the room isn’t ready until 3 p.m. As always, it’s best to work closely with the front desk to make sure the hotel can accommodate any special requests or arrival times.

[Photo Credit: Amy Chen]

Four Chincoteague tips

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Chincoteague, Virginia, located just a few miles south of the Maryland border on the Delmarva Peninsula, is best known for a children’s novel, Misty of Chincoteague, published by Marguerite Henry in 1947. Misty is a beloved pony.

Beloved ponies provide the key to Chincoteague, and the local ponies, called Chincoteague Ponies, are essential to the Chincoteague mystique to this day. In late July, there is a pony migration by water from neighborhing Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island. After swimming across the channel separating the two islands, the ponies are penned and then sold at auction. Jay Jones wrote an entertaining story in the Los Angeles Times back in July about the pony migration.

Old-timers will tell stories of a place that used to be far quieter, with fewer facilities, though to many visitors Chincoteague will appear rather rustic today. Its downtown is full of little tourist shops, while the long strip of Maddox Road leading out to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge is full of chain restaurants, miniature golf courses, tchotchke stores, and supermarkets. Chincoteague is affordable, low-key, and unpretentious.

The National Wildlife Refuge is the most beautiful part of Chincoteague, and includes a vast swath of broad beach. The beach gets very busy in the summer, of course, though it seldom forces sunseekers into cheek by jowl proximity.

Here are four retail and activity tips for Chincoteague.

1. Woody’s Beach BBQ, 6700 Maddox Boulevard. The best barbecue in town is also one of the newest arrivals on the local restaurant scene. Woody’s does fantastic chicken, pork, sandwiches, sides, and desserts. The “Fam Packs” are cost-effective for feeding hungry armies of friends and family.

2. Main Street Shop & Coffeehouse, 4288 Main Street. Housed in an early twentieth-century house, Main Street Shop and Coffeehouse is imbued with a casual if relatively upscale charm. The coffeehouse component of the Main Street Shop is but a tiny piece of the establishment, which is otherwise concerned with home wares, gift cards, books, and clothing. This is the best place in Chincoteague to fuel up on caffeine.

3. Bike rental. Check out Jus’ Bikes (6527 Maddox Boulevard) for a bike rental. (Jus’ Bikes, rather confusingly, rents more than just bikes, but no matter.) A bike will allow you to enter and exit the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge free of charge. Multiday rentals will amount to around $10 per day for your rental.

4. Mister Whippy, 6201 Maddox Boulevard. Soft-serve ice cream and sundaes are an essential component of the Chincoteague experience, and Mister Whippy is the old favorite.

(Image: Flickr/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Northeast Region)

Solo women’s travel surges in popularity

by Laurel Miller on

Despite what the much over-hyped film (not the book) Eat Pray Love would have us think, solo female travelers did exist before Elizabeth Gilbert. The difference, I think, is that now that Julia Roberts is starring in a movie about it, it’s suddenly viewed by mainstream America as “okay.”

And that’s okay. I may be a bit annoyed by the fact that Hollywood is responsible, but at the end of the day, who cares? It’s just great that experienced independent travelers will get less grief, and women who might not otherwise attempt a solo trip are now inspired to do so. The sheer volume of women-oriented travel companies has been steadily rising over the last five or so years, and now it looks like we’re hitting the tipping point.

While traveling alone is never easy for a woman, it’s comparatively a piece of cake now, compared to what women of even my mother’s generation must have endured. Yet, as a 41-year-old American female, I’m often amazed by how concerned other people are about my marital status (or lack thereof), my plans for my uterus (or lack thereof), and how I can afford to travel/who’s going to take care of me when I’m older/when am I going to grow up? I can handle these questions when there are cultural differences involved (sometimes with gritted teeth, like when I was 32, and a young Israeli male told me I’d better “find someone to marry quickly,” before I was “too old and ugly.” Sweet.).

I’ve never been one to give much of a hang about what others think, or else I wouldn’t have been able to put up with the comments denigrating my lifestyle. I hear them less now that I’m somewhat older (read: approaching end of child-bearing years), and because travel writing is now my profession. Unlike countries such as Australia or New Zealand, where a “gap year” of travel before university is a rite of passage, most Americans still tend to be constrained by what they view as adult, or gender-related, responsibilities.

Things are changing, of course. But the release of a book-turned-movie appears to have done more for the advocacy of independent women’s travel in one summer than I’ve experienced in a decade of travel journalism. A recent CNN article citing Eat Pray Love as inspiration profiles two women: a widow taking an early retirement, and a 32-year-old, now-frequent traveler who bit the travel bullet after being laid off in her late twenties.

I should hasten to add that I don’t consider myself a feminist (for a multitude of reasons that have no place on a travel blog), and I’m fond of describing myself as “spiritually bankrupt.” I don’t travel to be a “strong” woman, or find enlightenment. Travel is a highly personal thing, and everyone has their own reasons for doing, or not doing, it. I don’t care why other people travel; I just applaud the fact that they do, as long as they’re respectful of other cultures and the environment. I travel because it’s the thing I love most: it’s what motivates and inspires me, both personally and professionally, and I find it endlessly fascinating, even when things are going awry. I love learning about different cultures, trying new foods, seeing new landscapes. I love riding a bus for 24 hours, because it’s part of the experience. And yes, I prefer to travel alone.

Am I running away from something? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Will I ever settle down and stop traveling? Um, no. Am I ditching adult responsibilities? Nope. I have a home base, pay my bills on time, work a couple of “stationary” jobs, because travel writing isn’t lucrative. I’m in a long-term, committed relationship, I have plants. Sometimes I get burned out on travel, or have a disastrous trip. But within a day or two of arriving home, I’m always ready to plan the next adventure, and get on the road again as soon as possible. I do gain confidence from traveling alone, and thrive on its challenges. It’s a reminder that I can accomplish the goals I set for myself, For some, that might be called self-empowerment. For me, it’s just a lifestyle choice.

Not everyone is programmed to live the life society dictates, and plenty of people living so-called conventional lives, including mothers, find ways to make travel a part of their lives. Here’s to a national cultural shift that supports the exploration of the world outside our own bubble. Whatever set of gonads you happen to possess.

Update from the field: Mobile boarding passes still don’t work

by Grant Martin on

Gadling Labs is on the road this steamy August weekend, bouncing from O’Hare to Houston to Seattle and to Anchorage. It’s a good day for flying – there are unusually few thunderstorms barreling through the Midwest, our hangovers are light and the red vinaigrette in first class is a bit punchier than normal. Perhaps its the humidity on this Canadian Regional Jet of yore.

Following up on our post last week on the questionable efficacy of mobile boarding passes, we decided to take a pair of American Airlines and Continental Airlines passes out for a spin today.

Passing the TSA officer outside of the K/H wing in O’Hare, we fired up our handy iPhone 3GS and downloaded the boarding pass on the fly. Asked about the failure rate of mobile passes at this station, the friendly officer replied “About one in a thousand here.” That’s a pretty good hit rate, and it’s too bad that we’ve been one of those out of a thousand in the past.

Slipping through security (digression: when timed, we found that the new backscatter scanners process passengers at almost half the rate as the traditional magnetometers) and ambling over to the H5, it was far too early for boarding, so a little bit of browsing on our not-so-reliable Clear hotspot helped us pass a half hour.

And when boarding began? We were the second in line. Problem was, the iPhone tried to reload the Safari webpage when we opened up the browser, and now that our session was stale the boarding pass had disappeared. We were left with the image above, no boarding pass and a line of stuffy passengers starting to grow impatient.

Lesson learned! Always carry a paper boarding pass. And when downloading the mobile pass? Make sure to cache a local copy on your phone for later use – many sites offer the option to “save a copy” when the pass initially opens and this could save a lot of time and effort while in transit.

Next up? Trials with the Continental Airlines boarding passes!

Bring an A/V cable for your laptop – Hotel tip

by Gadling Staff on

Many hotels offer high-speed wireless from the room, and the more upscale rooms will provide a decent-sized HDTV, as well. By bringing an audio/visual cord compatible with your laptop, you can plug right into most TVs, giving you instant access to all your online content on that beautiful in-room screen.

In addition to making use of a Netflix instant viewing account or Hulu, you’ll be able to bypass overpriced in-room movies (costing $12 or more) in lieu of a $4 new release at the Amazon On Demand Store!

Pro tip: Overcome bandwidth issues by downloading your flick before you arrive.

[Photo: Flickr | wlodi]