The Importance of Offering Breakfast

CNN Travel just released an article about hotels and their inclusion of free breakfast. Being an avid traveler and a very enthusiastic breakfast fan I was immediately drawn in.

According to the article, I’m not alone.

Seventy percent of leisure travelers think included breakfast is extremely important and 65 percent of business travelers think the same. Unfortunately this trend is only open to some sections of the market. These free breakfasts are really only offered on mid level hotels, the more you pay it seems the less you get. Upscale hotels have restaurants in them, but to eat at them you must pay. Only four percent of luxury hotels offer this free hot breakfast, which seems a bit backwards.

The hot breakfast trend has developed from competing chains trying to outdo one another. Hotels offer a new item to draw in customers so the other hotels start carrying it, be it hot waffles, eggs or custom made omelets. For example, Embassy Suites has marketed their custom made omletes so strongly that it has become "such a powerful part of the brand" according to Scott Smith a former Embassy Suites employee and professor at the University of Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. Customers have come to really appreciate these breakfasts; it can often be the deciding factor between one hotel and a comparable one. With decisions forming based on breakfast, it’s a cheaper way for hotels to draw in guests after all its easier to make somebody an omelet then drop room prices.

Having traveled around a lot, I would have to agree that complimentary breakfast is pretty important. When traveling the last thing you want to do is wake up in the morning in a strange place and have to search around for food. While the food search has gotten easier with location based phone applications, those don’t always work when abroad and you never know exactly what you’ll get. I was a notoriously picky eater as a child and knowing that my cereal and eggs would be the same at the hotel as they were at home was not only reassuring to me, but a life saver for my parents.

The bottom line is that the development of breakfast in the hotel industry has hit full force in mid value hotels but luxury hotels are still holding out and patrons will have to look elsewhere for a relaxing morning bite.

World Events and their Host Cities - The Good, the Bad, and the Undecided

In the aftermath of the Austin City Limits Festival blogs and articles have been popping up everywhere discussing the benefits and the downfalls to hosting the 3 day music festival. This got me thinking on a larger scale about the countries that host world events like the Olympics and the pros and cons they receive.

Research proves that nobody is really sure. Some host cities like Barcelona, Atlanta, and Beijing have experienced super success from their time as a host. Others like Montreal and Athens have suffered from the aftermath of the events.

The Chicago Tribune did an article on the impact of the Olympic Games on Atlanta. According to the Tribune, the city had virtually no debt after the games and brought in millions to the city over the next decade. The games launched a rebuilding of the downtown center revitalizing the city for years to come. The Olympic complexes were able to be reused the stadium going to the Atlanta Braves and other Olympic villages and buildings going to Georgia Tech.

A Google Earth View of the Olympic Complexes in Atlanta

The Montreal Olympics on the other hand showed the negative side of hosting the games. The city was left with a billion dollar debt that took city taxpayers 30 years to repay. In a New York Times blog Professor of Economics Andrew Zimbalist talks about the long term costs of the Olympics on their host cities. He explained while Athens broke mostly even from the games the long term upkeep of the structures are costing the city. The venues weren't able to be easily reused like they were in Atlanta and for the most part sit neglected.

However, most cities report positive effects from the games. Beijing benefitted tremendously from the games as they allowed for the push needed to revitalize the city and the infrastructure. A CNN travel article I read yesterday talked about the hot new nightlife in Beijing. Having visited Beijing in 2007 and not seeing anything, nightlife wise, to write home about I read further. Above a long list of hot new bars, restaurants and hotels was the claim that the Olympics pushed Beijing into a new world light.

Certainly they gave Beijing the push to give their infrastructure a much needed makeover but they went further than that. The 2008 Olympics opened up China to the world and made it more accessible to foreigners and natives alike.

Even South Africa is experiencing growing infrastructure after hosting the World Cup this past summer. Delta has added flights to it’s Africa route citing growing economic expansion as its reason.

While some of the games can be the downfall of the host city, most have had pleasant experiences. Despite the hard fate of Athens and Montreal cities continue to fight for the right to host the games, and that’s not something I see changing any time soon.

Specialty Resorts - Are they so special?

Maybe blondes do have more fun. Lithuanian firm Oliali seems to think so as they are planning a resort that is employed only by blonde women. Both real and fake blondes will be working as employees at this envisioned resort in the Maldives.

As strange as this seems, many travel destinations work on gimmicks. The ice hotel in Canada, sand castle resort in England and underwater rooms in Fiji are all examples. The destination is no longer enough to draw people; a gimmick must be employed to keep them. The declining economy plays its own part but perhaps the world has become to small for us. No longer amused by playing on the beaches we must live underwater to be amazed now. The spread of photography, the Internet and TV (namely the Discovery and Travel Channels) have already shown us what we will see on our vacations and do on our vacations. To be truly unique we must do something unexpected and stay somewhere truly amazing.

While the new developments in resorts worldwide have pushed new engineering to the limits and provide new sights and sounds to see, they quickly become outdated. Look at the giant Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. Once the premier place to go (and staring in an Olsen Twin movie) they are now offering family specials and bargain rates to attract customers. All of the money, planning and ecological destruction was for 10 years of popularity, then the begining of the slow crawl to irrelevance.

The world is special enough without gimmicks. Let’s just enjoy it how it is, with all the hair colors, not just blondes.