Must be hard times in the hotel industry. I seem to have had email in the past few days from every hotel I’ve ever stayed in, reminding me of how much they miss me. What they also seem to be missing is that I don’t usually visit a place because of the hotel: I stay in the hotel so that I can visit the place. Or, until I retired, because that was where the conference was.
This is especially true of airport hotels: I just used them in days gone by for a necessary stopover en route to or from somewhere*. For instance, there are many good reasons to visit Vienna, but adding to my loyalty points by spending a few days at the airport hotel is not a priority. (I only ever stayed there if I got there late or needed an early flight to the next destination.) What’s more, I have many thousands of loyalty points that I may never find a use for before they expire, because most of the places I still want to visit don’t have a hotel within 50 miles that will accept them.
*There was one instance where the conference hotel was actually on the perimeter of the airport at Geneva, which was more than usually convenient, but unusual – airport hotels rarely have enough in the way of conference facilities to support more than a moderately-sized seminar.
When I lived and worked in London, I occasionally got to take part in a security seminar in one of the hotels on the perimeter of Heathrow, but that was long ago and far away. I like to remember, though, that on one occasion I even won one of those little electronic organizer devices, which proved invaluable for playing solitaire during long journeys and attacks of constipation. I don’t remember what happened to it, though. Maybe I gave it away when I got an iGadget.
This is Edmund Hellmer’s statue of Johann Strauss II in the Vienna Stadtpark. The monument was erected in 1921. I don’t know the lady, but it proved impossible to get the statue without tourists. For some reason, I don’t have a picture of the airport, let alone the NH airport hotel.
Wheal Alice Music 