Pearls of Travel Wisdom

When You Open the Hotel Mini-Bar, What Do You Grab?

Carol Margolis — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:43:05 -0500

I’m curious as to how many people partake of the goodies in a hotel mini-bar. For those that do, is it out of desperation for food or drink after arriving into a hotel room late at night with a growling stomach, or is it an easy and quick snack or beverage that you routinely indulge in? Enough people must obviously grab food and drinks from the mini-bars as the hotels would most likely not have them if they were not profitable.

I was traveling to a conference with a brand new consultant who was not familiar with the institution of a hotel mini-bar. Many of the food items were laid out on a beautiful cabinet (similar to this photo) with a price tag discretely to the side. He thought the goodies were all free. He snacked away both nights of the conference, thinking that the hotel was really great for supplying him with all of these neat food items. He was really surprised when he checked out and had over $60 on his bill for these munchies. Luckily he did not partake in any of the adult beverages or his bill could have been triple the amount!

With more and more hotels charging for these items based on the weight of the refrigerator, I rarely even open the refrigerators. Some travelers have the items removed immediately upon check-in so that they cannot be billed for items that could not have used. Others, upon receiving a key to the refrigerator upon check-in, say no to the key. I just ignore the items and monitor my bill at checkout… and in all my years of traveling, I have only been charged for 1 bottle of water that I did not drink.

I have not eaten any food item from a hotel mini-bar in years. I cannot bear the prices that are charged for a bottle of water, a candy bar or a soda. I could buy 3 full bottles of wine for what the hotels want to charge for a ½ bottle. Room service looks cheap compared to the menu shown! I am definitely not contributing to a hotel’s bottom line with my lack of mini-bar indulgences.

How about you? Chocolate covered peanuts, a cold beer, a Snickers bar, a mini intimacy kit … what’s your pleasure?

Simple Strategies for Safe Travels

Carol Margolis — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:14:27 -0400

I followed a piece of my own advice this week (advice I should always follow, but sometimes do not). I was nearing my hotel in Houston at 11pm, arriving when the hotel parking lot was very dark and quiet. I did not look forward to unloading my suitcase and laptop tote from the car and walking across a very full parking lot so late at night (nor did my husband like the idea either!). Instead, I phoned the Marriott when I was within a mile of reaching the hotel. I asked for someone to meet me at the front door and escort me in. She seemed initially surprised by my request, but definitely agreed to have someone meet me. It was late enough that the bell desk personnel had left for the evening, so a security guard met me outside instead.

The security guard was extremely helpful. He unloaded my luggage and got it inside the hotel. He parked my car and brought in my keys. He couldn't have been more helpful, nor more appreciative of the fact that I did not risk my security so late at night.

This is a very simple strategy that will really help ensure your safety while traveling. Always have your hotel's phone number in your mobile phone for this very occasion.

For more important safety travel tips, jump over to Top 10 Tips for Travel Safety on Smart Women Travelers.

Also be sure to read Lolalisa's travel safety tips at Safety is ALWAYS an Issue when Traveling. Lolalisa lives in Orlando and is a frequent traveler to Houston, just like me.

Anyone for Swimming in the Frigid Outdoors?

Carol Margolis — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:34:16 -0400

Does your bathing suit typically get packed in your suitcase no matter where you are traveling to? I have to confess that even though I travel almost every week, I do not even think about packing my bathing suit unless I’m heading to a warm location and on vacation.

Many women (and men) toss their bathing suit into their luggage no matter where they are heading and no matter what the reason for travel. Many use swimming as their mode of exercise while staying in a hotel. Me – I always pack my workout clothes. Whether I actually work out in my workout clothes, though, is not always the case. Most hotels I stay at have a pool … I just never think to use it. I need to rethink my workout strategy, as a good swim is a great workout.

I can understand getting into an indoor pool when the temperature is low, but this Floridian cannot at all comprehend getting into an outdoor pool If the temperature is below 75(F) degrees. So I was shocked to see not just one, not two, but many people in the pool in 20(F) degree temperatures today in Banff at the Fairmont Springs Hotel. The pool is heated, but the outdoor air is not! I was freezing cold walking outside in these temperatures all bundled up in a sweater, coat, scarf and glove. How could they be outside in just their bathing suit and a robe, walking through snow to get back to their rooms?

While I may start adding my bathing suit to my packing list, you will not find me in an outdoor swimming pool in 20 degree temperatures! I'm not sure about an hot tub either unless the outdoor temperatures about much, much higher!

How about you? Does your swimming suit accompany you on your journeys? And does snow swimming appeal to you?

Travel Tips and Tweets with Twaller

Carol Margolis — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:57:24 -0400

With over 20,000 tweets per minute, Twitter can offer a wealth of information. From interesting industry stories to great deals offered by an airline, there is no shortage of tweets about travel. But if you are looking for information on a city you are traveling to, sorting through this constant stream of 140-character posts to find a relevant post can be daunting. This is where Twaller comes in.

Twaller does all of the searching and sorting for you. Pulling together applicable tweets based on keywords, hashtags, and user locations, Twaller then sorts them into categories and specific cities to make it easy to find what you are looking for. Say you want to find a good place to eat in Barcelona, some fine shopping in Chicago, or what the weather is like in Mumbai, this site makes it easy to find what you are looking for.

The site is still in Beta, meaning that they are actively working on improving it and adding more features, but we wanted to give you a head’s up on this promising service. We would like to see more corresponding tweets to the categories (right now you just see the three latest), the ability to click through to the actual twitter post, and a better flow to the site.

Twaller shows a lot of promise. We hope that you can find some useful information for your next trip through their service.

Keeping Track of Your Travels with Flight Memory

Carol Margolis — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:31:28 -0400

During the countless time spent in security lines, have you ever wondered to yourself how many miles you’ve traveled, or how many times you’ve flown between New York and D.C.? Flight Memory can keep track of your trips and display fun graphs and interesting statistics of your travels.

Flight Memory is free to sign up. Once you have an account, you can input all of your future or past flight information. How much you input is up to you, so you can detail all the information you have (Delta Flight 85, Leaving MCO at 9:15 AM, Arriving ORD at 10:45AM, Oct. 13th, 2009, on a Boeing 757, sitting in First Class with a window seat for a business trip) or you can just put in what you can remember (I flew from Phoenix to Seattle back in 2005) and Flight Memory will take care of the rest.

It can be a bit laborious to put in all of your previous flights, especially for the well traveled, but if you are a numbers nut then the payoff is worth it. Not only can you keep track of your longest and shortest flights (in terms of distance and duration), but you can find out how your travel milage stacks up to the circumference of the Earth or the distance to the Moon. It can also tell you, if you didn’t already know, your most frequent airports and routes taken, as well as the airline you fly the most.

But the coolest feature of this site is the poster you can have made of your travels. I wish I had this when I was showing my kids all of the places that I was traveling to! You can even order a personalized world map documenting all of your trips and statistics. Show off all of the cities and countries you’ve conquered in your travels!

Flight Memory is free to sign up and is a great way to put all of your travels in perspective.

Is This Bugging You? UPDATED

Carol Margolis — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:22:33 -0400

This flu thing has been bugging me (sorry about the pun). As a frequent traveler for over 20 years, I am used to traveling with strangers on flights and using hotel rooms and rental cars after them. However, this year the flu numbers are too telling to ignore.

The Orlando Sentinel recently ran an article about two women who died from the flu. Both were fairly young women – ages 46 and 53 – who never gave a thought to their risk anymore than you or I would. Nevertheless, they became fatal victims of this relentless virus.

Indeed, there have been nearly 100 confirmed flu deaths in Florida alone. Numbers like this are much too high to ignore.

To make it worse, we can’t control the behavior of others. I admit I was shocked and embarrassed to see how many women on a recent cruise failed to wash their hands after using the restroom. This is inexcusable on a ship with 2,400 passengers and almost that many crew members.

What can be done to protect travelers?

All travel vendors need to step up and do their part. Cruiselines have been particularly good about this, no doubt in part because of the frequent reported Norovirus outbreaks. Whatever the reasons, good hygiene is the norm on ships with very strong encouragement that passengers practice it as well.

Hotels vary on their commitment to hygiene but I was delighted with Bill Marriott’s recent blog about this problem. We can only hope that other hoteliers follow Marriott’s lead.

The airlines have not been so robust dealing with this. I have yet to see any comment from any airline addressing this serious health concern.

Fact is, the airlines have very tight turnaround schedules with no time to completely disinfect a plane. While the cleaning crews no doubt do a decent job given their time constraints, there is no suitable substitute for anything less than excellent hygiene with so much at risk for passengers.

UPDATE: Only hours after this blog was posted, MSNBC posted this article warning travelers that airline workers may actually spread the flu faster than the risks from other passengers. This warning comes from the Center for Disease Control. No comment yet from the airline industry.

As for restaurants, anyone involved in food preparation should be wearing gloves. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if this is done without examining kitchens. Otherwise, you can ask and hope they answer honestly.

What’s can travelers do for protection?

I am not a fan of wearing masks or gloves – good luck getting by TSA with a mask on – but if this flu outbreak reaches further deadlier heights, they may be necessary.

What you can do is cover your face if you cough or sneeze and wash your hands very frequently. I know this sounds a little Lady Macbeth-ish but there is no substitute for keeping your hands as clean as possible. Think about it, you touch your face and everything else hundreds of times each day.

Also, don’t walk around without slippers or socks on your feet. This is especially true for heavily traveled spots like hotel rooms.

If you are feeling ill, stay home. After all, you wouldn't want anyone who is sick flying in the seat next to you, much less walking around a mall or sitting at the next desk at work. If you are ill, avoiding contact with other people is critical to minimizing the spread of this disease.

Another thing: Consider getting a flu shot. Of course, check with your doctor first but for most people, they should be safe. USA Today made it easy for fliers to get shots by posting a schedule of airports and times the shots are available.

However, to complicate things this year, there is the normal flu influenza as well as the much publicized and more deadly H1N1 strain, often called swine flu. As of this writing, the H1N1 vaccine is not available but will be soon.

Nevertheless, the Center for Disease Control recommends both injections for those who are at high risk. For more information, check out the CDC here for the normal flu and here for the H1N1.

What else to do? Encourage others to do the same. It is much safer for all of us if everyone does their part.

Think this is not a concern because you won’t get the flu? I certainly hope it doesn’t happen to you, your family, or your friends but consider this sobering thought…

Remember the nearly one hundred people above who died from this bug? They never thought they would get it either. Look where they are today, leaving behind hundreds of grieving families and friends. And this is only in Florida. Do the math for the rest of the country, much less the world.

Please take care and be safe.

Are We So Busy 'Doing' That We Are Not 'Enjoying'?

Carol Margolis — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:08:03 -0400

Whether we are on vacation or a business trip, our schedules are full every minute of every day. Must do this.. must see that ... we try to do it all. And at the end of our trip, have we accomplished what was on our long to-do lists, or do we lament over what did not get done? Unfortunately, I am in the latter camp more than I want to be. I spend so much time focused on the 'doing' that I overlook the 'enjoying'.

On a recent flight, I started a conversation with a gentleman sitting next to me. He was reading one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, authored by my mentor Jack Canfield. This gentleman had just been to visit his 90-year old mother. He was upset that TSA had not allowed him to bring a jar of beets through security - a jar of beets made with love by his mother. He had recently lost his job and he struggled to pay for the airline ticket, but he really wanted to see his mother. He relayed how unworthy he had been feeling of late, and his confidence in finding work was very low.

Well into the conversation I began to have regrets about starting the conversation in the first place. I had a novel with me that I really wanted to get back to. I had work that I should be doing ... and magazines to catch up on. But I felt that he needed someone to talk to so I continued to listen. The values that he was expressing in family, in his religion, in hope and trust, made me realize that I could learn a lot from this man. I began to relax and enjoy and learn from his conversation and decided that my novel could wait for another time.

I put aside that mental checklist that I carry around in my head that says I have to check off each item on my to-do list, and it felt very nice and freeing. The time in flight passed quickly. As I got off the plane, I was really pleased that I had been able to enjoy our conversation and felt that the guidance we offered each other would be valuable for a long time to come.

The point of this article is to let some enjoyment into each and every one of your travels; even business travels with full to-do lists. That enjoyment will be different for everyone. Some of the enjoyment is planned - some of it comes upon us unexpectedly as in the gentleman with the beets. It may be a full day of enjoyment or just a few minutes.

Your enjoyment may come from being with friends or from some precious moments spent alone. Be open to it, look for it, and start each day asking "What enjoyment am I going to experience today?" You may find that you will be able to tolerate more of the travel challenges when you focus on the enjoyment you experienced. So leave your to-do list and long list of travel complaints aside for a short time. Really feel the enjoyment that you were able to have a result of being fortunate to travel.

My flight took off and landed safely … even with my items in my seat back pocket!

Carol Margolis — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:01:04 -0400

There has been lots of talk lately about the FAA’s rule about having only official airline-approved materials (safety brochures, in-flight magazine, air-sickness bag) in the seat back pocket. This may be a rule, but it is certainly not a 100% enforced rule. Only once have I had a flight attendant tell me that I could not store my laptop in the seat back pocket (this was on a commuter jet). So instead I placed the laptop under the seat in front of me to follow ‘the rules’ (my laptop bag had to be gate-checked because it was too big for the tiny overhead bins). If we were to hit any turbulence, the loose laptop had a much more likely chance of going airborne instead of safely being tucked inside the seat back pocket. I think it was this same flight attendant who told me we could not take off if I had my purse on my lap (my purse is a wallet, so not big at all).

Regardless of this one seat back pocket event many flights ago, I have never heard of this FAA rule until last week. I checked with several flight attendants from various major airlines. They had not heard of the rule either, and some of them checked with their companies to verify that they were not enforcing it. Not only were none of the major U.S. airlines enforcing it, the flight attendants said that they dreaded the day if they ever had to enforce it!

Can you imagine waiting to take off until the flight attendants had checked down into the depths of every seat back pocket? We would never take off on time! And then they would need to check the pockets again in preparation for landing … so we would end up circling for an hour while they did pocket-check. It is already difficult enough for flight attendants to get everyone to cooperate with the no phone and electronics rule. Airlines would need to replace the fabric or leather pockets with clear vinyl that flight attendants could see through, and that is an expense the airlines do not need now.

And what about the creative companies that have developed seat back carriers that hold lots of stuff in a myriad of pockets (especially great when traveling with kids) – is that now also against the rules?
I went to www.faa.gov and www.tsa.gov and looked for any articles on “seat back pockets”, but found nothing. So until the rule is enforced and made public to travelers on these websites, I am going to continue filling my seat back pocket with magazines, my iPod and water bottle. And I think most flight attendants will be A-Ok with this.

It's NOT All About Shampoo!

Carol Margolis — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:33:02 -0400

When the survey requesting your input on your desired hotel amenities was created, I was wondering where the desire for quality shampoos and conditioners would show up on the list. This is the item that most often comes up in casual conversations about what we're looking for in our hotels. While this may be number one in girl-talk, it was the ability to be connected and get our work done that was the most requested item.

In-room wi-fi without the added charge is what you're asking for as our number #1 ranked item. You'd rather have the cost added into the hotel rate than to see it as an extra line item on your bill. If traveling for business, these extra line items may not be expensed and they can be maddening, especially when we're connecting online to be in touch with our families and friends who we are away from while traveling.

So hotels -- listen to what Smart Women Travelers are requesting and include wi-fi at no 'extra' charge. Add printers and web conference ability and we are even happier.

Now back to the quality shampoos and conditioners - this ranked #2 in our survey results. We want great lathering shampoos where a little goes a long way and leaves us with luxurious hair. No more watered down variety shampoos where one wash needs the entire bottle and we still don't feel clean.

The most frequently requested write-in desire - a strong hair dryer. We want wattage! We are in a hurry and we need a powerful hair dryer to get us on our way (and untangled cords that we don't spend precious minutes uncurling before we can even use the dryer).

Our #3 ranked item is our safety. Security in the hotel and in our rooms is very important to us (though I guess not as important as great shampoos!). This includes hotel escorts if we arrive late or leave very early, strong locks on our doors, and cameras in hallways and main areas.

I recently spoke with a pilot for American Airlines and one of her safety rituals is to cover up the peep-hole in our hotel room door with tissue (in case the peep-hole was reversed so someone could look in), as well as checking the room upon entry for anyone in the closet, shower on behind the curtains.

Other top items, in order requested, include:

Close proximity to shopping

Sleep aid items (eye mask, ear plugs, white noise music and/or lavender spray)

Free breakfast (and a nice on-property restaurant for dinner)

Comfortable beds with a down duvet and quality sheets

Robe and slippers

Plush towels

Nice soft toilet paper

Lots of electrical outlets

Overall, we want to feel like we're at home when we stay in a hotel. And since we travel frequently, it is very important to us to have these basics.

If you have experienced a great hotel with these amenities, let us know! The hotel will get added into our travel resource section on Smart Women Travelers.