Who is the hotel employee that is most responsible for making sure your stay is pleasant?

Hint: it's not the bellman.

When you travel on business you may not even see hotel housekeepers if you leave early and return in the evening. As a leisure traveler you are more likely to meet the woman who cleans your room. (I'm not going to be P.C. here. I'm sure somewhere in the world there is a male hotel housekeeper but I've yet to meet one.)

But whether you see your housekeeper or not, you will come back to a room that miraculously has been transformed from how you left it to clean and tidy. New little soaps and shampoos, clean towels with those arranged folds you could never do yourself, more notepads and pens, and so on.

It doesn't happen by accident.

How can you show your thanks?

Leave a tip on the pillow for her.

How much?

At least $2. The larger the room and the more she has to clean, then the larger the tip should be. $5 a day is not at all unreasonable in a swanky hotel, because the housekeeper has bigger rooms to clean and therefore cleans fewer during her shift.

If you stay more than one night and the housekeeper has done a really good job why not make the last tip a little nicer.

For someone who might make only $8-10 an hour (and not even necessarily have full-time hours), another $5 or more per hour in tips will make a real difference.

If you can afford to stay in a hotel or motel then you can afford to leave a tip. Brighten your housekeeper's day. She might even leave you more of those cool little designer shampoos.

              

By all accounts, the on-going economic meltdown has been the most punishing to hotels since the 1930s. Interestingly, it seems that some independent hotels and smaller chains with less uniform properties such as Kimpton and Joie de Vivre have been weathering the storm better than the huge chains.

Perhaps recognizing that, several of the large chains have rolled out plans to capture new business with products aimed at travelers interested in a different experience.

I operate a hotel booking service for self-employed business travelers, those who work for small firms, and for people at large companies who are not required to use a designated corporate travel agency.

A question I always ask a new client is whether he or she belongs to AAA.

Why?

My experience is that AAA membership is by far the most common lodging discount for individual travelers. For the price of a basic annual AAA membership ($54 in northern California) an individual business traveler gets access to discounts at most hotels up and down the price ladder. This goes for both chain hotels (Marriott, Starwood, Hilton, Best Western, etc.) as well as independent properties.

When you're traveling to a big city do you take into account hotel parking charges?

You should.

We'll take a look at San Francisco because it's the Big City that most people in northern California regularly visit. But the lesson here is the same if you live in the Northwest and your Big City is Seattle or Portland, the Midwest and Chicago, etc.

Janice Hough is a Bay Area travel agent who writes a very useful and readable blog under the Tripso banner.

She recently published one I really liked concerning the use of conference and meeting rates at hotels. This would also apply to other events such as weddings, big family reunions, etc., where a block of rooms is secured.

Rather than paraphrase what she wrote, I'll just give you a link to her post and encourage you to read it, along with three brief anecdotes of my own to buttress Janice's observations.

- My partner and a colleague of his went some years ago to Las Vegas for a convention. I can't remember the specific amounts but there was a convention rate available at the Las Vegas Hilton. I researched it and found a hotel-only package deal for the Hilton offered by a tour operator that saved their company about $200 each.

- One of my partner's employees went in May to Orlando for a conference. The conference hotel had a rate he could book through a linked website that happened to be Hotels.com. The rate was $239 per night. However I found and booked for him a simple AAA rate for $215 at the same property, which for four nights including tax, saved the company $130.

- A client went this past weekend to a conference in Park, City, Utah. He asked me to compare the conference rate with the best price I could find. In this instance, the conference rate was the best rate and I advised him to use it.

Is there a moral here?

Yes.

When it comes to conference and meeting rates, as The Miracles sang in 1960, You better shop around.

Our parents won.

As a bona fide member of the baby boomer set, I remember thinking at some early age that the stuff my parents’ generation considered glamorous was actually pretty tacky.

Think Las Vegas and Palm Springs.

But somewhere along the line the tables were turned. Was the lovefest for martinis in the late 90s the first harbinger of the revolution? Maybe it was the children of baby boomers - our parents’ grandchildren - who reappraised the postwar to early 60s era and pronounced it cool.

.. FLAMINGO RESORT
Regardless how it came to be rehabilitated, the mid-century modern look is hip, hot, happening, and so right now, and for one heck of a fine example of it you don’t have to go all the way to Palm Springs or Las Vegas.

Go to Santa Rosa and stay at the Flamingo Resort. The full and proper name is the Flamingo Conference Resort & Spa but it’s mostly known as the Flamingo Resort or simply the Flamingo.

Ever fancied yourself the gentleman or gentlewoman winemaker overseeing your domain from a 19th century estate? Well, if you treat yourself to a stay at the Raford Inn you could easily imagine yourself in this role.

The 1880s-era Raford Inn has a commanding view from a hillock overlooking an expanse of vineyards in the Russian River valley below. To make your fantasy complete the inn has a long veranda perfect for an afternoon glass of “your” wine made with grapes from “your” vines.

VIEW FROM THE SIDE OF THE RAFORD INN

Opening Sunday, 30 November, is Sacramento’s newest hotel: the Citizen Hotel.

I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time. With the debut of the Citizen Hotel, Sacramento now has a 198-room boutique hotel with character and style in the downtown city center.

The Citizen occupies what was built in 1925 as a high-rise office building but which over time had become a seedy relic. The developers (with help from the City of Sacramento) gutted the property and rebuilt it as a top-notch hotel.

The property will be managed by San Francisco-based Joie de Vivre Hotels, whose mission is to operate a chain of California hotels that are not in the least bit chain-like. Each one has its own name and personality; the Citizen is no exception.

For instance.

In a story in today’s Sacramento Bee, Chip Conley, the CEO of Joie de Vivre, is quoted as describing the red and black color scheme of the hotel lobby and mezzanine lounge (“Scandal”) as “law library meets bordello”. Now that just has to be fun.