Happy Wednesday to all of our travel friends, both near and far! Here are some articles we’ve read from other bloggers (and other sources) that we think you may like, as well, so we’re passing them along.
Tag: hacks
Hotels Have Found A New Way To Keep You From From Changing The Temperature In Your Room
Setting the temperature of your hotel room has become a cat and mouse game between guests and the hotel management. People just want to set their rooms to a comfortable temperature for when they’re sleeping and hotels want to minimize the amount of money they spend on keeping those rooms cool.
Hotels are constantly updating technology to keep rooms at the temperature THEY want by installing smart thermostats, sold by companies who advertise that this is actually good for the guests’ comfort.
Now, there are ways for guests to override the temperature settings on some of these thermostats…
Alternate Ways To Cool or Heat Your Room When Regular Hotel Thermostat Hacks Don’t Work
One of the most popular posts I’ve ever written for Your Mileage May Vary has been How To Override Hotel Thermostat Settings. Briefly, hotels with digital thermostats are sometimes able to set them so they don’t go above or below a certain temperature. So you may want your room to be 68 degrees at night, and you may set it to that, but the temperature of the room won’t actually go below 73 (or whatever the hotel has set it to). This saves the hotel money via a lower electric bill, but makes for a whole lot of sweaty (or freezing, in the cold months) guests. The post I mentioned above tells you how to override the settings for a dozen or so popular brands of thermostats.
Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of thermostat makes/models that are missing from the post above. It’s not my fault – the hacks just aren’t out there (or at least weren’t attainable when I was originally researching for that post). Or some hotels may purposely set their thermostats up so they can’t be accessed so easily.
Here are some ways, albeit some unconventional ones, to get around all that.
How To Get Free Upgrades From Hotels
I’ve been able to score countless upgrades in hotels using this trick. It’s totally legal, amazingly easy to do and doesn’t throw off my moral compass. Even those who are timid about asking for upgrades can make this trick work for them. I’m not saying it’ll work 100% of the time but when it does, it’s nice to feel like you’re getting more than you paid for.
Of course, the easiest way to get a hassle-free upgrade is to have a high level of status with a company’s loyalty program. Now, I don’t travel enough to earn status and have no intention of chasing status and locking myself into one specific brand. I get some perks by strategically choosing certain credit cards, such as the American Express Platinum Card, which gives me certain perks and mid-level status in some programs. Hotels will often proactively upgrade members with status to a higher level or “executive” room before checking in. Continue reading “How To Get Free Upgrades From Hotels”
Darth Vader On A Plane, When Your Points Are Stolen, More Bad News On The Marriott Hack & More…
Happy Sunday (and happy New Year!) to all of our travel friends, both near and far! Here are some articles we’ve read from other bloggers (and other sources) that we think you may like, as well, so we’re passing them along.
