Top Hotel Scams

Here's some top 3 ways hotels will try and save/make money on you:

Laundry

Never do laundry in amounts through the hotel laundry, it will cost you an arm and a leg. The odd shirt or T-shirt, pair of pumps or whatever, save the rest for the launderrette.

Often hotels are reluctant to tell you where the nearest launderrette is or flatly refuse. This is because they make so much money on the people who pay $2 to wash a pair of socks.

Avoid.

 

Mini-bar

One way hotels save money it take the cooling elements OUT of the minibar, turn the fridge elements off, or just leave the lights working to save them that extra cash. You may have noticed this when you grab a nice warm beer or that tepid bottle of water.

It's not a weird co-incidence, hotels will do this on purpose. All very well, but when you're paying 5 stars, you expect the fridge to work and the drinks to be cold.

Sad little hotel scam.

 

Internet

This has got to be the biggest scam of the lot.

How much does it cost to connect to the Internet at home, $20-30 a month for unlimited connection?

Unless you're connecting from Tibuktoo through satellite uplink, you're getting that identical connection, multiplying that by say 10 guests paying $20 per day, that's $6,000 per month for that same connection.

Big money for the hotels, rip off for the common consumer.

Flickr for image placements

In forthcoming blog, I'll be using Flickr to host the photo's.
This means they'll be available to the open source community to manipulate as they please, but otherwise will be no different.

Windows Live Writer

Are Americans Clever??

Well I wondered this one as I sat in the Blogworld convention in Vegas not more than 6-7 months ago.

"Are Americans Clever?" cos in a way there's a lot of churn over there and most of the people doing the churning don't know they're churning.

WIndows Live Writer
This little piece of software can be testament because if you're a travel blogger, many will be the times when you'll find yourself with all the material to do a blog but a bad connections.

This software, I am hoping, (if Americans are clever), will take away the sins of the non-broadband world and deliver us from bad uplinks, 6-10 minute image uploads and all the other nightmare scenario's you can expect when blogging on the road.

Compose: then post as your connection allows.

Download it here: windows live composer

666 the number of the beast.

as iron maiden used to sing.
My fave was the ace of spades 'gamblin's for fools, but that's the way i like it honey..'

Without a spade in sight or an ace. Here's 6 stories from 6 authors in 6 weeks. It's called 'we tell stories'.

It uses a map to illustrate how a story progresses, the narrative being provided by 6 successful UK authors.

* Charles Cumming
* Toby Litt
* Kevin Brooks
* Nicci French
* Matt Mason
* Mohsin Hamid

Each week you can tune in and read a little. The stories are quite long, longer than a coffee break, so if social networking is getting you down, this may be the ideal distraction.

Visit the site here and click through each story until the devil arrives to reprimand your computer and sack you for wasting office time.