Scam of the Day: Sherry Lynn Vertoch has been arraigned this week for racking up an unpaid bill of $55,000 while staying for two years at the Inn Marin (oh, clever name). How did a hotel let her get away with this, when I get the bum’s rush twenty minute’s before check-out time? Simple. She claimed to be a federal agent working for the Internal Revenue Service, and that she couldn’t pay her mounting tab until her investigation came to an end. Why does this work? Who wants to trigger an audit by evicting an IRS agent?
Hotels
Moreau town officials in New York state are trying to change the town’s zoning code definitions in order to force out sex offenders who have taken up lodging in motels, many of which also host a number of families with children who have been placed there by social service agencies. It’s a situation that is cropping up all over the country: motels being used as a dumping ground for problem cases that should be under the purview of governmental agencies.
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• A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against the Hoover Days Inn in Mississippi, blaming the deaths of four students from the Mississippi University for Women on incense lit by a maintenance worker, which sparked the conflagration. Bigger culprit: the hotel itself, which was wood-framed and lacked a sprinkler system. (Generally speaking, hotels built before the 1960s aren’t required to have them in many places.) Given that open flames (everything from Sterno cans to full-on meth labs) are common in the cheaper motels, sprinklers are the first thing you check for.
• In-Room Amenities can be lethal: A woman stabbed her boyfriend five times in the back and twice in the chest using a butter knife, then severely burned him with hot cocoa before he fled the Empress Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. Reason? They were arguing over American Idol.
• Police discovered a cache of weapons at the Red Mill Inn in Branchburg New Jersey on Jan. 25, including a grenade launcher, .308 caliber semi-automatic assault rifle, countless rounds of ammunition. At the time of the man’s arrest he was wearing a bullet-proof vest. Given that police also found a police scanner, maps of a U.S. military installation, as well as a Middle Eastern red and white traditional headdress, he’s got some explaining to do.
Motels in the News
Empress Hotel, Motels in the News, Red Mill Inn
Hotel rates will be easier on the wallet, with room rates forecast to drop 3.2 percent in 2010. This comes on the heels of one of the worst years ever for the lodging industry, when RevPar (Revenue per available room, a metric by which hotels judge their profitability) dropped 16.7 percent.
Hotels
Hotel Rates, RevPar
Choice Hotels International plans on opening a 32-room Comfort Inn and a 120-room Belle Rive resort in Haiti, despite the devastating earthquake. The hotels are in Jacmal, Haiti’s resort town. Is this a valiant but ultimately doomed effort to resuscitate Haiti’s moribund tourist industry, or do they see real potential here? I hope the latter.
Hotels
Choice Hotels, Haiti, Jacmal
• Iraq Hotel Bombings: Bombs exploded at the Hamra Hotel, the Istar Sheraton, and the Babylon Hotel on Monday, killing 41 people. All hotels were veritable fortresses of security, with armed guards and barricades. If terrorists can breach the security perimeter of hotels in Bagdad, what does this say about security precautions in, say, the Four Seasons Mexico City, or the Bangkok’s The Peninsula?
• The Dumbing Down of Dubai: The ruler of this popped bubble of a sheikdom, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum is not attending this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos to avoid unwanted attention of Dubai’s economic collapse. So why did he personally approach Posh Spice to design a luxury hotel – for $40 million?
• Be careful when asking for toiletries at the Hotel Gansevoort in Manhattan. Cameron Douglas, son of actor Michael Douglas, just pleaded guilty to dealing methamphetamine and cocaine while sequestered in the chic hotel. According to intercepted phone calls, his code words for meth were “bath salts.” (He’s now looking at a minimum 10 years at Hard Time Hotel.)
Hotels
Just as Holiday Inn celebrates the launch of 3200 new properties around the world comes this gem: You can now opt for “human bed warmers” at three HIs in the UK. They’ll warm up your bed beforehand, if you can stand the idea of fleece-wrapped staffers floundering around in your sheets. I’d opt for a hot water bottle.
Hotels
Holiday Inns
Obama’s carrot to the energy sector – endorsement of nuclear power – may not be enough to pass a climate change bill in the Senate, but it will bolster Blue Castle Holdings’ bid to build a nuclear reactor near Green River, Utah. (This will disrupt water flow in one of the West’s great rivers; no water would be returned to the river once it’s heated to spin the generator turbines.) Meanwhile, Vermont’s only nuclear power plant is threatened with closure by the state legislature after levels of radioactive tritium have grown to alarming levels in the groundwater. On a positive note, no one has dared finance a nuclear reactor since 1977, and the federal government’s stimulus package budgets money for nuclear clean-up, not construction.
Utah
Every Sunday is now car-free in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. If you’ve ever walked around it’s historic downtown, you’ll know what a polluted maze it has become. Kudos to city officials for six hours every Sunday for car-free travel along 15 kilometers of city center streets. Also in the works: a plan to make the city’s Centro Historico a completely car-free zone.
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Donate time to your community. Besides the feel-good points you score, you also will receive a free night’s stay at one of 50 hotels across the United States. Granted, most of these hotels are two- and three-star, limited service hotels (Fairfield Inns, Courtyard by Marriott). Plus there is limited availability, blackout dates, and you’ll have to pay room tax. In some cases you might be offered 50 percent off the rack rate — which is what most of these hotels are going for anyway in this depressed economy — but nonetheless kudos to Sage Hospitality, which manages these hotels. Offer runs from now until Dec. 20. To qualify, you must provide a letter on the non-profit organization’s letterhead proving that you’ve completed the volunteer work at a 501c3 organization such as Meals on Wheels or Habitat for Humanity. (Best deal: The Nines, a Starwood Luxury Collection hotel in Portland Oregon.) Booking details: http://www.giveadaygetanight.com.
Hotels
Hotel Deals
