Ned Your Always Wrong

I used to do a lot more travel then I do now, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I remember that when the whole thing started with the drought out west, and that hotel visitors should d their part to help save water, from the shower flow restrictors from hell, to use less towels thing, by hanging them up and we wont replace them thing. The hotels spent a lot of effort in trying to get guests to do their part to help save water, or guilt you into it. Now we fast forward a few years to the late ninety’s, and on top of the never ending drought that now has every hotel in the country doing their part to end, the hotel operators in California have a new problem to solve, it is the lack of power generation capacity due to the new spiffy de-regulation of the California power companies. So suddenly, hotels are brought in to help, they remove all nonessential lights, in some cases I had seen brighter caves, and on top of this they also add a $2 to $5 a night “Power Surcharge”, and it didn’t take long for hotels elsewhere to also impose this surcharge, including locations where power was/is abundant and cheep. As I understand it, this charge has pretty much gone away. I guess I am confused by the whole “less for more” philosophy that governs the hotel industry.

So now lets go forward, and by the looks of all the little placards all over my room last week, that the hotel industry has saved us from the drought, and is now moving on to save the world from global warming, because that cards no longer talk about saving water for drought purposes, but now it is the whole spectrum of cleaning the room linens and towels. The cards told me of how much energy is expended in the laundry process, and that all this laundry and cleaning is increasing my carbon footprint, and that I should do my part to help.

Enough is enough guys, stop acting like you have some kind of green soul, and you hugged the trees that were chopped down for paper to print all those USA Today’s that are delivered to every room, not to mention all those silly little placards. Why is the outside of most hotels lit up with big bright lights, thats not very green.

If you want me to help you save money, that you can apply to the bottom line, why don’t you just say so. Give me the option to stay in a “Green” room, without a big TV, and reduced lighting, and where the towels and linens will only be replaced every third day, and charge me less… I’m sure that will go over real big…
Don’t treat me like I am as dumb as dirt (or you), and plaster my room with all the propaganda on how socially conscious your company is, when you are really not, you are in business to make money, but you should at least be honest about it…

Okay one last thing, I had a sign like this in my room, never thought about hanging stuff from the fire sprinkler, but I wonder how many people have gotten a surprise shower, apparently enough flooded rooms to motivate hotel chains to start posting these signs….