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'Roaches, Rats, Mice . . . ' Say Hello To the World's Dirtiest Hotels

The web site for the Hotel Carter near Times Square in New York City is fairly straightforward: "Enjoy the warm hospitality and service at the Hotel Carter," says the home page, "a unique and inviting departure from traditional hotels in Manhattan." 

One departure from traditional hotels in New York City seems to be how filthy the Hotel Carter is, according to a listing by TripAdvisor.com that ranks the top ten dirtiest hotels in the US as well as several other countries around the globe.  The Hotel Carter stands at number one on the U.S. list, with the Continental Bayside Hotel in Miami Beach capturing that coveted second place. 

"Roaches, rats, mice, horrible smells, dirty sheets, horrifying bathrooms, outlets that hang out of walls," was one review by a guest on TripAdvisor after a stay at the Hotel Carter, where the rate for a random day in mid-February I selected was $140 a night, including taxes. 

Another guest tagged the hotel as the "filthiest, most unsanitary place I've ever seen" and warned of bedbugs.

TripAdvisor considers all the reveiws it receives from guests who make voluntary posts to determine its list of the dirtiest hotels. In Paris, it's the Hotel Merryl.  In Italy, it's the Hotel Nizza in Rome you want to avoid.  While the web site lists the top ten dirtiest hotels in France, Italy, India, Spain, the United Kingdom, Asia, and the U.S., TripAdvisor couldn't find ten in Germany.

"We looked everywhere," TripAdvisor writes, "but our members tell us there aren't that many dirty hotels in Germany."

Three, to be exact.

As far as I could tell, almost all the hotels chosen for the dubious honor of making the lists fall into the "budget" category, so if you're venturing to a new destination and come across a really cheap hotel, you might want to check out TripAdvisor's Hall of Shame before you book for the night.

Sex In the Sky? Bikinis Rule the Runways at This Mexican Airline

Ever since I was a young reporter on the staff of the Sunday magazine of The Washington Post, I've known that sex sells.  So for that matter, do kids and dogs.  Put an attractive woman on the cover of a magazine or a picture of an adorable child or puppy, and people will pause to notice.  And maybe even buy.

(National Lampoon parodied this truism with its famous cover of a darling dog with a pistol pointed at its head on the cover.  The cover line read in big type, "Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog.")

Now comes a discount Mexican airline, VivaAerobus, with a calender featuring cheesecake shots of attractive female flight attendants.  Launched with a YouTube clip that's attracted 75,000 views in the two weeks since it was posted, VivaCalendario is a step back in time, to an era when airlines in the US used sex to sell their products.  Continental Airlines used to promise, "We really move our tails for you."  (And the next line in the chorus of the airline's ad jingle was, "We make your every dream come true."  Imagine an airline promising that today.) In 1967, a first-person book by a flight attendant titled "Coffee, Tea or Me?" became a best seller in a dozen languages.  (One revelation: Spanish men ARE really the best lovers, according to the book.)  In its early days, Southwest Airlines got noticed when it put its female flight attendants in hot pants. 

The women of VivaAerobus pose in tiny bikinis and even a reflecting jacket (well, not MUCH of a jacket) worn by ground personnel who work on the tarmac.  Passengers can buy the calendar for $10 at the airline's ticket desks or on board flights, and the proceeds benefit a Mexican children's cancer institute, so you can feel noble about your purchase.

The marketing idea clearly comes from one of the investors in the airline, Ireland's Ryanair, which for a couple of years has sold its own calendar of flight attendants posing fetchingly, including a shot of a  brunette in a white bikini lying on her back over the enormous tire of an aircraft with a smudge of grease on her tummy. 

For the sake of flight attendants, I only wish their jobs today were as glamorous as those highly stylized shots suggest.  Most US-based attendants have endured pay cuts even as their retirement accounts evaporated and management stretched the number of hours they had to work.  With the exception of JetBlue, Southwest, and Virgin America, there's not a lot of joie de vivre among airline employees, though, of course, every airline has its exceptional workers who do treat passengers as valued customers.

For my part, I'll take the flight attendants of the US Airways flight that had to ditch in the Hudson River recently.  They are in their 50s and may not win a bikini contest against VivaAerobus' pin-up girls.  But they hustled passengers safely off that Airbus, and that kind of professionalism trumps centerfold stats in my book any day.

So what about this airline VivaAerobus?  Well, today it's offering $49 flights from Austin, TX, to Cancun.  That's only five times the price of the calendar.

Interview with Rudy Maxa - WhosWhoInAmerica.Com

Interview with Rudy Maxa - WhosWhoInAmerica.Com

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Can An Airline Go Green? Dubai's Emirates Makes the Effort

Every environmentally conscious traveler knows boarding a plane (or a cruise ship, for that matter)  doesn’t get you any points in the war against carbon emissions.

But Emirates, the Dubai-based airline that’s working to increase its presence in North America, flew a Boeing 777-200LR and its chairman, Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, to San Francisco to meet the press and explain the steps Emirates is making to become a green airline.  And while it’ll be a while before aircraft become real friends of the environment, Emirates has made some baby steps, according to my colleague, Ana Scofield, who attended the press conference.

Here’s what Emirates, which has one of the youngest fleets flying these days, has accomplished:

--The airline negotiated agreements with Russia, Iceland and Canada to chart an efficient polar route between North America and the Middle East that minimizes flying time.

--When parked in Dubai, Emirates aircrafts are hooked up to electric power to conserve fuel, a fairly standard procedure these days among airlines.

--Dubai air traffic controllers will give priority to large jets landing to minimize fuel-wasting holding patterns.  And San Francisco International Airport promises to grant Emirates a continuous descent when landing for the same reason, though the airport’s notorious fog delays may have something to say about that. 

--Before takeoff, the Emirates Boeing 777 will be “washed” with a silicone-type liquid to reduce drag. 

--On board, Emirates instituted a re-cycling program for cabin waste, something so basic it’s surprising that every airline doesn’t ask its cabin crew—and every airport its ground crews--to segregate metals, glass, and paper for later recycling. 

The San Francisco press conference was a rather subdued affair, perhaps because that morning the San Francisco Examiner posted a story on line about the airline’s hiring practices, which the Wall Street Journal had earlier reported included a restriction against hiring gays; the airline denies it has any such rule.  Outwardly all was well, however, with Al-Maktoum gifting San Francisco with an antique silver scabbard.   And the airline’s Americas chief, Nigel Page, told reporters that 92% of seats on a recent Los Angeles-Dubai flight were sold.  Along with San Francisco and Los Angeles, Emirates also serves the New York City and Houston markets.