I've been in the hotel marketing and public relations business for years, which is why I had to stop and re-read a recent article I saw.
According to the BBC, the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen is offering a meal voucher worth about US$36 for any guest who hops on one of the hotel's exercise bikes - which is attached to a generator - and produces electricity for the hotel. This hotel, by the way, also produces electricity with solar panels on its facade.
"Interesting promotion," I thought.
A hotel spokesperson says the program is the first of it's kind in the world. If it's successful after a one-year test run, Crowne Plaza expects to launch it in all of their hotels in the UK.
This is just the type of thinking that's destined to save our world or, at the very least, stop the Danes from pawning the Little Mermaid to pay their electric bills.
Unfortunately, though, it doesn't go far enough. If Crowne Plaza was really serious about being green they'd be thinking bigger. Much bigger.
For example, why not also use the hotel's revolving doors to augment the building's air conditioning? As a parent I can guarantee you there will be no lack of adults willing to donate three-year-old children to the effort for a minimum of 12 hours every day. Perhaps even 20 hours.
And what about all that plumbing? Couldn't swimmers in the hotel pool generate enough water current to flush the hotel's toilets? Just tie their ankles to a bungee cord or something at the end of the pool.
And let's not forget about those sex-crazed Scandinavians - why not put special springs in their beds to siphon off all that body heat and send it to someplace where it's needed. Like Sweden.
Anyway, you'll need to peddle about 15 minutes to generate the required 10 watt hours to get your voucher. That comes out to about $144 for an hour's work which shows just how expensive it is to generate electricity or make beer in Denmark.
So enough about saving the whales. They've had their chance.
Do some good and go save a mermaid.
Jim Ferri
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Have some European hoteliers gone completely mad? Or have they just found a new -- although a bit quirky -- market niche?
There's an article in the British newspaper Telegraph about a hotel in Nantes, France that makes you feel like a hamster. Yes, on your next vacation you can now stay in a room where you can work out on a giant hamster wheel, feed on hamster grain and sleep in hay.
And you can get all this for only about $150, although those on a strict budget could probably hop over to the local Maison Dépôt and buy the cage wire, etc. for about half that.
"The hamster in the world of children is that little cuddly animal. Often, the adults who come here have wanted or did have hamsters when they were small," Yann Falquerho told the Telegraph.
Falquerho, along with Frederic Tabary, is the owner of the hotel and, according to the paper, was also dressed as a hamster for the interview. Now there's a fun couple for you.
They warn customers, however, that room prices will soon be going up since today's hamsters need a giant TV screen and Wifi. Oui, certainement!
This hay craze, although sans hamster, has also spread elsewhere in Europe.
According to CNN some nature lovers and eco-conscious tourists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland -- looking for cheap and unusual accommodations, no doubt -- are now staying in converted barns and sleeping on beds of hay.
In one of these Heuhotels ('heu' is German for hay), people can now get close to nature even in the wee hours of the morning. The accommodation range from feed stalls with wooden platforms to open lofts stuffed with bales of hay.
Some hotels provide privacy curtains and, in some, a bottle of wine to hit the hay with. Most, however, still require you to bring your own sleeping bag and towels.
And all this for just $16 a night. Hamsters, no doubt, are extra.
Jim Ferri
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The managing director of our company -- in Los Angeles attending a convention at the Hyatt Grand Regency Plaza -- telephoned me yesterday.
Although he called me on his cell phone the connection was so spotty I suggested he find a land line and call back. I then sat there for 15 minutes awaiting his call, wondering if he had gotten mugged in a phone booth somewhere. I was thinking what a great opening that would make for an episode of Law & Order...the body slouched over the house phone, the receiver dangling from the cord like some strung-up bandit in an old western...
When he finally called -- on his cell again -- he told me he couldn't find a telephone in the hotel's convention area or lobby. In fact, he said, according to the concierge all phones had been removed from the hotel's public areas. Few people have noticed, I guess, since we're all busy chatting away on our cells.
This got me thinking about all the other things that hotels are quietly removing.
When was the last time you found stationary and envelopes in your hotel room? It seems most hotels have now put the cost of printing stationary towards the cost of installing modems.
And remember sewing kits? Now when you're in a rush and a button falls off you wait a half-hour as housekeeping runs your shirt down to some hidden cave in the bowels of the building beneath the laundry room beneath the kitchen.
And pillows. Good hotels still give you nice comfortable pillows, but a few weeks ago I stayed in a chain hotel I think Mobil Travel Guides and Fodors have been avoiding for years. The pillows in this place were so small I would have used one for a stamp if there had been any writing paper and envelopes around. I mean what hotel GM in his right mind would ever think all his guests would have heads the size of Muppets?
It was, to say the least, a bit hard to fall asleep. But lying there in bed I thought of how a hotel guest here could escape a murderer trying to suffocate him or her with a pillow, because the perp could only cover one nostril. Ah, what a great opening for Law & Order...
Jim Ferri
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