5 ways to sleep better at hotels

Getting to sleep and staying that way can be the supreme challenge when on the road. (Photo: 900hp/Flickr)

Travel can be the enemy of sleep. I’ve spent too
many nights in hotel rooms—as you probably have, too—unable to fall
asleep (after all, it’s only whatever-o’clock at home) or tossing and
turning (who could be stomping down the hall at 3 a.m.?). It’s
all-the-more frustrating because you know getting a good night’s sleep will be essential to performing well at your business meeting in the morning.


Sure, you can use medication or melatonin to help regulate your sleep
when traveling. But there are also some simple, non-medical ways to
ensure a peaceful sleep while at hotels.


>Bring your own alarm. Use an alarm on your phone or go old-school and bring along a travel alarm. Do not rely on a wake-up call from the hotel or trust your ability to properly set an unfamiliar alarm clock. Important:
if you aren’t using the hotel alarm clock, be sure the alarm is set to
“off”, so it does not go off in the middle of the night. If you can’t
figure out how to do that, just unplug it.


>Keep neighbors at bay. Always ask for a non-adjoining, non-connecting room when you check in. (Not sure about the difference? Read this.) Sounds from noisy neighbors can seep under the door and disturb you.
If you get stuck in such a room, take a preemptive strike against
interruption by rolling up a towel and placing it along the crack at the
base of the door.


>Do not disturb. Always hang the “Do Not Disturb”
notice on your door. Hotel staff will respect that, and rowdy guests in
the hallway might quiet down if they know someone is trying to sleep.
Call the hotel operator and ask for all calls to be blocked. If
you are not using your mobile phone as your alarm clock, turn it off; if
you’re using its alarm, set notifications to silent. Slide the door bolt across so you won’t worry that someone may inadvertently enter your room.

A good Bucky eye mask and earplugs can help ensure slumber (Photo: Bucky.com)

>Travel equipped. Keep a set of comfortable
eyeshades and earplugs permanently packed. Airline amenity kits usually
come equipped with these, so they’re a great source for maintaining
stock. There are two types of earplugs: the more common type is made
with expandable foam. A less common, but much more effective type is made of soft wax or silicone
that completely seals off the ear canal. Beware—moldable earplugs work
so well that you could sleep through an alarm or wake up call. Both
types can be found at your local drugstore. If you’re caught
without earplugs, just ask—most hotels can provide them. And if your
room’s curtains won’t close tight and you forgot eyeshades, use a slacks
hanger in the closet to clamp the curtains together.


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>White noise. Try using the hotel room heater or
air conditioning fan to provide enough “white noise” to drown out
disturbances. When doing so, be sure the switch is set to “on” instead
of “auto” which can make the fan go on and off throughout the night.
There are also several helpful white noise apps to use with your smartphone.


>Location, location, location. At the hotel, choose a room on a higher floor, away from elevators, ice machines, hotel bars, stairways or entryways. Or simply ask for a very quiet room—front desk staff usually know which areas of the hotel are the most peaceful. Also, north or west facing rooms are less affected by early morning light.

 - TravelSkills

U.S. Outbound Tourism Snapshot for May 2014

Asia and Latin America are both the benefactors of an
improving U.S. economy that is giving residents the ability and
confidence to travel overseas again.

— Samantha Shankman

---

The number of U.S. citizens traveling abroad in the first six
months of 2014 increased six percent year-over-year to 32.6 million,
according to monthly statistics released this week by the U.S. National Travel and Tourism Office.


Every month, the NTTO releases data regarding recent travel
activity, including details about outbound travel from the United
States. This is the most recent month for which this information is
available.


Slightly more than half of those travelers, 53 percent, crossed
borders to Mexico (38 percent) and Canada (15 percent). The other 47
percent of U.S. citizens traveled overseas, with the Europe and the
Caribbean, unsurprisingly, capturing the greatest market share.


Worth noting is that Asia captured 7 percent of the market share in
the first six months of the year, which was more than Central America (5
percent) and South America (3 percent) despite the distance and higher
airfare needed to get there.


Monthly statistics; however, show a slightly different trend.


In June, U.S. outbound travel grew 10 percent to 7.3 million
travelers. The regions with the highest growth in terms of inbound U.S.
visitors were South America, up 21 percent, and Mexico, up 14 percent.


Asia still experienced growth, but at a slightly slower rate of 8 percent.


U.S. Citizen Travel to International Regions in 2014 by Month (000s)

Regions	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Total YTD	% Change YTD	Market Share YTD
North America	2,439	2,442	2,846	2,750	3,031	3,693	17,202	14.1%	52.7%
Europe	578	497	807	868	1,306	1,614	5,670	4.8%	17.4%
Caribbean	499	550	705	630	624	743	3,751	9.2%	11.5%
Asia	376	313	397	382	379	424	2,272	4%	7%
South America	128	138	155	123	144	208	896	4.1%	2.7%
Central America	219	226	283	214	209	301	1,452	10.2%	4.5%
Oceania	52	63	60	41	46	45	307	6%	0.9%
Middle East	140	119	141	142	162	181	885	10.8%	2.7%
Africa	24	21	28	28	36	41	177	-0.5%	0.5

 – Skift

Should You Arrange An Airport Transfer?

In the good old days of package holidays, the return transfers from
the airport to your hotel, a suitcase in the hold and a meal on the
plane was usually included in the price. Now, so many elements of
package holidays have been stripped out to make the price sound lower.

The last two occasions when we’ve gone on package holidays, to
Madeira and Cyprus, we found it almost as cheap to hire a car as to pay
for our return transfers from the airport to our hotel. Having the hire
car meant that we could organise our day trips.

However if you’re staying in a city, I don’t see much point in having
a hire car. Parking spaces can be difficult to find and parking rates
high.

On our recent trip to Budapest and Prague, I organised taxi transfers
through the hotels at which I was staying. It cost 30 Euro from
Budapest Airport to our city centre hotel, and 21 Euro from our Prague
city centre hotel to the airport (we took the train from Budapest to
Prague). Our taxis were punctual and comfortable, the journey time was a
lot shorter than using public transport. I thought that the price paid
was good value for money for four passengers.

When I went to Chicago with our son Simon, Blacklane Limousines
offered us a complimentary transfer.  I thought that after the 7 hour
flight from Edinburgh and getting through US immigration, it’d be great
to get to our accommodation quickly. I decided to request a pick up time
one and a half hours after our scheduled time of arrival at Chicago
O’Hare Airport. The price included a 60 minute wait time after the pick
up time. As our flight arrived early, we came out into the arrivals hall
twenty minutes before the pick up time. Five minutes later, I received a
text and email to say that our chaffeur had arrived.

Deciding whether you should arrange airport transfer will depend on
the price, the location of your accommodation and the available
alternative routes of transport.

Runaway Photo: Different Faces of the Gold Coast

Gold Coast, the Glamorous Queensland’s City

Gold
Coast, a costal city of southeastern Queensland is one of the hottest
tourist destinations for both locals and international visitors. It
attracts several million people all year round. But why is the Gold
Coast such a special place? I had a chance to stay for a week in
Broadbeach in the Gold Coast during #Room753 campaign, and certainly, I
discovered a lot about this charming place.

The day starts with a
variety of colors in the sky. The sun rises with charisma. I enjoyed
the sunrise everyday through my big window. The sun shines on the coast
that extends 60 km. It’s a pleasant 15-25 degrees Celsius even in the
winter. There are a number of attractions and activities you can do in
the region including golfing, hot air ballooning, hiking, visiting Great Barrier Reef,
and so on. People are mellow and laid back. And the day ends with an
orange-glow sunset. It almost feels too perfect to be real.

The
whole region is glamorous with attractions and activities, but most of
all, what makes Gold Coast great is the beach itself. When I went for a
walk on the beach, I truly understood why people are attracted here. The
sandy beaches are firm and flat, perfect for walking, running, or just
enjoying the warm ocean. It’s great for surfing and various water sports
and becomes one big playground for children, dogs, and adults.

For a week, I enjoyed seeing the different faces of the Gold Coast. Here are some of the highlights of my stay.

Sunrise over the horizon – seen from Peppers Hotels 37th floor

Surfers Paradise and Gold Coast at night

Gold Coast at night

Gold Coast at night

Sunny Broadbeach – Winter Wonderland, Gold Coast style

The long soft sandy beach is what makes Gold Coast so amazing

Long coastal line of Gold Coast and beyond

Hiking in the Burleigh Head National Park

Surfers Paradise and the Gold Coast from up in the air

Sun is setting on the Broadbeach

Evening walk on the beach

Gold Coast skyline at night

Gold Coast skyline at night

Surfers Paradise at night

Gold Coast and the Surfer’s Paradise seen from Burleigh Head National Park

@Queensland

Would you fly in a Windowless Plane?

The IXION Windowless Business Jet Concept has no windows. Instead any scene
can be projected onto a high-res screen on the interior cabin walls and
ceiling. It could be the view from the outside of the plane or relaxing
scenes or business charts! The displays would be powered by Solar
panels on the jet’s exterior.

The design recently won the Exterior Design Concept category at the 2014 International Yacht & Aviation Awards for Paris-based company Technicon.


The advantages of removing windows include:

• construction cost reductions
• a lower weight leading to decreased fuel usage
• increased flexibility for the inside layout of the plane

Isaac Asimov, the late Science Fiction writer, in his book Caves of Steel
described windowless flying. As someone who loves gazing from the
window, his prediction filled me with dread. Air design up to now has
been about increaseing window size (for example Boeing with the 787)
 but with most passengers absorbed in kindles, seatback TVs, Ipads and
computers, today, do we need windows anymore?
Many airlines now have cameras which can send back the exterior view to a
screen. Is this IXION concept heralding a future step? Would passengers
take to it?


Would you fly a windowless plane?

 - Wild About Travel

The 'One Touch' Time Management Strategy: Cutting Down the Little Tasks

I’ve been experimenting with different time management strategies lately,
especially with small but frequent tasks that are total time drains. 
I’m still planning my time around the workday, but reading emails and blog posts has been killing my free time. While I use Google Gmail’s Priority Inbox
(highly recommended) to try to streamline the process, I just can’t
seem to shake some of these emails.  I’ll read half an email, “star” it,
then (hopefully) come back later to finish reading it.  The problem
with this: when I come back, I have to start dealing with the email all
over again.  I often run into the same issues I had dealing with the
email the first time around.  It’s all a vicious cycle of email
inaction.
This is where the “one-touch” time management strategy comes in and
saves the day.  Instead of taking multiple stabs at dealing with an
email, I only get one chance.  Once the email is open, I have to
completely deal with it right there; there’s no going back.  It either
gets 1) a read and replied to, 2) just read, or 3) deleted/archived. 
Then it’s gone and out of my life.

While I’ve perfected this strategy on email, it works on lots of other tasks, too.

How to Implement the One Touch Approach on Anything

1. Identify the problem. No need to spend much time
breaking the problem down.  It’s simple in most cases.  For example,
let’s say is “how should I deal with the email I just received asking
about plans for this weekend?”

2. Determine how long it will take to deal with this problem.  My one-touch method incorporates David Allen’s Two Minute Rule in Getting Things Done.  The Two Minute Rule says that if it’s something you must do and it will take you less than two minutes, do it right away.

3. Once beginning to deal with the problem, follow through until the process is complete.
In this case, replying to the email takes less than two minutes, so I
would respond and send my message immediately. Once I do this: process
complete. One touch success.

If it takes longer than two minutes, I don’t have to deal with the problem right away.  If the email I received involved paying a credit card bill instead, I would have the option to save it for later.

However, once I commit to solving the problem, I must complete the action 100%.
In the case of my bill, I would check to see what I owe, read over my
statement, log into my online billpay account, and pay the bill.  A
fragmented approach, such as simply reading my statement but then not
paying the bill until later, would result in wasted time, a cluttered
email inbox, and possibly forgetting to pay. I don’t want any of these
things to happen nor do I want email or any other small tasks to pile
up.

Where One Touch Works

Here are some examples of how I’ve implemented one-touch time management strategy.

1. Doing all of my dishes at once after eating dinner.

2. Hanging up clothes right after taking them off.

3. Click to unsubscribe email newsletters I don’t read.

4. Read a entire web page or blog post at once.

Overall, I find this strategy is best when a problem is realized and a
response of some kind is definitely necessary, as in my email example.

The targeted tasks are rather insignificant, but that’s the whole
idea. We encounter these little productivity roadblocks dozens of times
each day, so blasting through them quickly and efficiently keeps the
annoyances from piling up.

Have you tried similar time management strategies? Have you noticed a
difference in how you handle small tasks? Share your story below.

photo by: gagilas

The Best Flight Tracking Websites, Ranked and Reviewed

How many miles did you fly last year? What about different
airlines? Total number of hours spent in the air? If you can't answer
any of these questions, listen up because there's a slew of ways to
easily track all these fun travel statistics with only a few clicks of
the mouse.



Right now is the ideal time to begin logging your flights for
this fresh year so that, come December, you'll have all sorts of fun
stats to share at holiday parties and on social networks. "I flew 70,000
miles and visited 32 different airports in 9 countries this year" sure
beats, "Yeah, I traveled a lot."



With this is mind, we put flight tracking websites to the test:

FlightMemory:

Advantages:

· Full flight detail listing

· Ability to set region to track domestic flights easily

· Thorough flight stat calculations, including longest, shortest, slowest and fastest flights

· Online shop for aviation gifts and posters of your own travels for €29.95-149.95

· Significant network of frequent flyers

· Airline and airport rating system



Disadvantages:

· A lot of ads

· Cluttered homepage with 'dated' look

· Non interactive map

· Ability to import easily from OpenFlights only

FlightDiary:

Advantages:

· Aesthetically pleasing dashboard

· Full flight details are able to be uploaded

· Plenty of calculated stats, including carbon emissions, time in air, number of flights per month

· Auto-fill based on flight number

· Ad-free

· Massive database and frequent flyer community

· Ability to easily export to other databases

· Ability to import for free, but only from OpenFlights

· Interactive map that allows clicking with data retrieval

· Airline and airport rating system

· Fare-class tracking



Disadvantages:

· No airline logos

· Rare updates and new benefits

· Facebook linking is very minimal and only posts links to user profiles

JetLovers:

Advantages:

· Automatic social media connection and tracking by check-ins

· Ranking amongst social media connections

· Lots of levels with cute badges for bragging rights

· Color-coded airports depending on frequency

· Ad-free


Disadvantages:

· Reduced ability to manually log flights as it's mostly auto-logged from your social media check-ins

· Add flight depending on amount of 'friends'

· No airline, aircraft or flight number tracking

· Due to the automatic tracking by social media, a missed check-in or private flight won't get logged

· Slightly childish look to website

Pitot:

Advantages:

· Ability to import easily from OpenFlights and FlightDiary with duplicate detection

· Aesthetically pleasing dashboard

· Airline logos are included, which makes the flight history table look like an airport departures board

· Ability to store frequent flyer details and track via program

· Top 100 leaderboard for bragging rights

· Auto-fill from a massive database of airports and airlines

· In the map, flight paths are color-coded based on frequency of route as well as airline flown

· Features its own frequent flyer sub-communities with which to compete and create networks

· Ad-free

· Ability to track future flights

· For flights in the past 2 weeks, automatic auto-fill of details

· Fare-class tracking



Disadvantages:

· Not free, but €4.99 per month is not a bad price for one-stop shopping

· Still in alpha-testing, so not all features are 100% live

· No social media syncs



Note: Pitot is not fully live, but is in alpha testing. We've
been told that flyers who express early interest now may results in
added perks moving forward.

OpenFlights:

Advantages:

· Full flight detail tracking

· Top 10 leaderboard for bragging rights

· Substantial network of frequent flyers

· Simple data entry

· Interactive map with not only user's routes, but all airlines and routes from the airport



Disdvantages:

· Has ads

· Basic user interface

· Difficult importing directions

Winner:

It boils down to FlightMemory or FlightDiary,
depending on what stats you most enjoy or which site your friends give
their loyalty. We personally use FlightMemory, but are considering a
switch and Pitot sounds extremely promising. For frequent users of
Foursquare, however, there's nothing easier than JetLovers.

|| Jaunted