You’ve already gotten the benefit of wearing your t-shirt. Now, make that shirt work just a little harder.
If you’re concerned about the cleanliness of your pillow, the inside of your shirt is probably cleaner (or at least more acceptable) to lie on than a suspect pillowcase. Simply turn the shirt inside-out, slide it over your pillow, and you’re good to go… to sleep.
[Photo: Flickr | bandita]
Want to try something different this vacation? How about staying in one of the weird hotels in the world? Whether you want to unleash your inner mermaid or spend time repenting your sins in prison, these hotels offer everything for the truly strange-at-heart. On the flip side, at least you don’t have to worry about showing your friends boring old vacation pictures…
Do you ever wonder how Tarzan and Jane felt swing though the trees? Well wonder no longer! At the Ariau Amazon Towers Hotel in Brazil you live in the tree tops. This hotel is actually built in the tree tops of the Amazon Rainforest.
Ever wonder how it would feel to live like a caveman? Well now you can! The Madonna Inn Hotel in San Luis Obispo, Calif., features a caveman room equipped with it’s own waterfall and caveman mallet.
If being a caveman or cave-women is not your style, how about an igloo? At the Icehotel in Sweden, everything is made of ice, well, ice. As you can see in the video, even the furniture is made out of ice. Make sure to pack your wool socks!
Want all the amenities without breaking the bank? Are you okay with small spaces? Then this hotel is for you! It is a Japanese capsule hotel and it has everything you need: TV, alarm clock, and radio.
If the capsule hotel is not for you, how about a concrete tee-pee? The Wigwam hotel in Arizona features tee-pees instead of rooms. This hotel definitely gives you the feel of being in another place and time.
Guilty conscious? No fear! Alleviate your suffering by spending time in the Alcatraz hotel located in Kaiserslautern, Germany. You even get your own prison-striped pajamas!
Think you might have been a rock star in another life? The Hard Days Night hotel in Liverpool, England is the world’s only hotel devoted to the Beatles. You can play the piano in the John Lennon Suite. Sorry, screaming fans not included.
Right now, at the hotel a few blocks from where you live or work, there’s a good chance that something exciting is happening. It isn’t a dropped tray in the restaurant or a housekeeper walking in on a tryst. It’s far greater: the future is being planned, defined. Two partners are putting the finishing touches on a presentation to venture capitalists. A person who has spent years developing a product is pitching it to the person who might be his first customer.
Some of these meetings will amount to nothing, a lifetime’s effort yielding nothing but a story. Others, however, will produce everything from satisfaction to incredible amounts of wealth. From the crowd of startup jockeys occupying space in hotel lobbies, jobs will be created, and countless lives will be changed.
If you want to see the future from conception, it’s happening now – and it’s happening in a hotel lobby.The entrepreneurs gathering behind the shroud of people in motion may not be allowed to meet in the spaces they have claimed, but they are using the skills they have developed or been taught to evade detection with the ultimate goal of seeing their dreams come to fruition. They are staying below the radar and working diligently to pick the right hotel lobbies for the tasks at hand. No move is unplanned, with the hope that one conversation – one of many, most likely – will deliver the desired outcome.
It’s a strange situation, no doubt.
The next time you pass through an urban hotel lobby, don’t bolt for the elevator bank or the front door. Take your time; look around. Try to discern the pockets that form among the guests. You might just see the next big thing long before it happens.
This is a week-long series from the writer of White Collar Travel about the role hotels will play not only in the recovery of our economy, but in giving an early home to the businesses that will define tomorrow.
If you want to hold a business meeting in a hotel lobby where you really don’t have any reason to be, it’s worth doing a little homework. Pick a hotel without doing a little reconnaissance, and you could suffer an embarrassing moment in front of a potential client or investor. You’ve worked hard enough for the meeting – and a faux pan may ensure that you won’t get another.
Invest some time in choosing the hotel lobbies you want to use (and you should definitely use more than one). Take a day to wander the city and look for big hotels that have spacious seating areas. Conduct follow-up visits to see how the traffic flows through the lobby on different days and at different times. In general, get to know your environment.
Once you have a feel for the hotel lobbies that could define your future, it’s time to take a closer look. You want to make sure you have everything you need at your disposal. Keep the following in mind when selecting hotel lobbies to use for business meetings:1. You need power
Make sure the lobbies on your list have plenty of power outlets. You may have a laptop with a long battery life, but you don’t know how long you’ll need. If you’re running around from one meeting to the next, you may not have time to stop to recharge in between. The best hotel lobbies for business meetings not only have lots of power outlets but have them (a) near seats and (b) in parts of the lobby that are out of the way.
2. Stay connected
You may not think you need internet access for your meeting, but it’s good to have a connection in case you need to look something up. Also, you’ll probably arrive early, and that connection will make you productive while you wait. If you can score free wi-fi, that’s fantastic. A good backup is a hotel that has a service anyone can tap into for a fee. What’s $10 when you’re future’s on the line?
3. Lots of motion
A busy hotel where nobody spends much time in the lobby is ideal. The action around you will camouflage your activity, but you won’t be taking up space that a paying guest might want. Hotels near financial or business centers are great places for this dynamic.
4. Busy employees
A staff that is regularly and fully engaged with guests won’t have time to think about you. A hotel lobby that has employees actively engaged in efforts to look busy is dangerous. A bellman looking for something to do could find a reason to hassle you.
5. Make sure there’s a “Plan B” nearby
This is what I loved about the Westin Copley Place Hotel. It was adjacent to a Marriott with a large lobby, and there was a Starbucks right around the corner (and across the street). Within a short walk, there were countless other hotels you could use.
This is a week-long series from the writer of White Collar Travel about the role hotels will play not only in the recovery of our economy, but in giving an early home to the businesses that will define tomorrow.
There’s a human element to hotels that often goes unnoticed by its guests. Beyond the check-in desk and past the steel “Staff Only” doors are employees with real feelings and concerns about the communities in which they live, and those emotions are apparent in the social efforts made both inside and outside the hotel. From clean-up programs to rescue efforts, hotels have consistently offered ways their staff and guests can give back. Simply put: I love when good brands do good deeds.
The Ritz-Carlton announced today it will offer environmentally-friendly water bottles at its North American hotels and select properties in the Caribbean. This news comes at a time when many travelers are seeking information on the oil spill clean-up efforts, and is another example of how the hospitality industry is working hard to help build social awareness around our top environmental issues.
According to a statement from the hotel, an estimated 5 million, 16oz-plastic water bottles are used every year at Ritz-Carlton properties. Armed with this information, Simon F. Cooper, president and chief operating officer of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, challenged his team to find a more environmentally-friendly solution.”Four years ago I realized that we were sending 10 million plastic bottles to landfills in North America, and we have been working with suppliers ever since to change that,” Mr. Cooper told me.
Fast forward to today, and guests at Ritz-Carlton’s North American hotels and select properties in the Caribbean will now drink from a 16oz all-natural water bottle made entirely from plants. The co-branded water bottle, part of a new partnership between The Ritz-Carlton and Prima, can decompose in 30 days in a commercial composting facility, or can be reprocessed and remade 100 percent into new bottles.
Manufacturing the new bottle requires 49 percent less fossil fuels, 45 percent less energy, and 75 percent less greenhouse gases than a classic plastic water bottle. The renewable Prima water bottle is made from Ingeo, a performance plastic comprised of 100 percent renewable resources.
“Plastic bottles are made from crude oil, take a significant amount of energy to produce, and less than 20 percent are sent to recycling facilities. Even when recycled, these bottles cannot be used to make the same quality of plastic,” Cooper said.
Earlier this year, Marriott International (which includes The Ritz-Carlton Hotel brands) announced the launch of a water conservation project in China. The new Prima water is expected to transition to all North American and select Caribbean properties within the next few weeks.