TRAVEL TIPS FOR TOMATOES
Phyllis Stoller has a BA from Tufts University, an MA from New York University and a Finance Degree from the University of the South Bank, London England. Phyllis Stoller founded and managed for 16 years, the largest tour operator for women in North America. She was voted top in women’s travel by Travel & Leisure Magazine,the first to receive this honor. Phyllis has appeared on The Today Show, CNN, Lifetime TV for Women and others. She is a consultant on marketing to women.
Phyllis now resides in New York City and London, England and is affiliated with ECPS Consulting Corporation in New York. She prides herself on her family: husband, Eric, a ‘keeper’, sons Nick (comedy writer and director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Matt , a progressive political strategist who works with liberal Democratic candidates. Phyllis can be reached at Phyllisnycity@gmail.com.
Things that go "bite" in the night
When Cheryl mentioned to me an incidence of bed bugs in a top American hotel, it rang a bell, as another friend had just shared her single room with some of them. So as nasty a subject as possible, and a total turn off to travel, here we go on how to stay healthy and bug free while you travel.
To begin with use the internet to check on the general reputation of your chosen hotel: Trip Advisor.com has a basic monopoly on hotel reviews, but Hotelchatter.com might help as well. Do remember that both accept comments from readers so you will meet the occasional vengeful traveler whose critique should be ignored. And sometimes Hotelchatter simply links to TripAdvisor!
Bed bugs: you find them first on the corners of the mattress, along the seams, and around the label. Look around the bed in the area least likely to have been well cleaned and look for poppy seed type excrement or bed bug bodies-live or dead. Report to management asap and obviously change your room. If it were me, I would collect a few specimens in a hotel envelope or even take a photo with my phone in case management is uncooperative or they say the hotel is full. Keep your suitcases well off the floor.
My targets for cleanliness patrol are the remote, the coffee maker, the carpet just outside the bathroom, and the curtains. Hotels rarely clean the remote control and I am finding that poor maintenance is easily evidenced in dead batteries in remotes. The second neglected item is the coffee maker and the third is the set of curtains. I was once in a hotel room, which had NO curtains. When I complained, the Front Desk retorted: Wassamatter, lady? Don't you like clean curtains?
Complaining is an art. Get your speech together with facts not hysteria. Go to the Front Desk and ask for the name of the Hotel Manager. Names always enhance your fight and try to meet with him/her. He/She will be guarded by the Front Desk, so next ask for the name of Assistant Manager, finally for the Manager on Duty. You want to see one of them, not talk on the phone. Then smile and do not move. Say something like this: What is a reasonable amount of time for me to expect to wait for this person? When you get the attention of someone high up, ask them to sit down, ask for their card, then tell your story with photos or evidence. (The idea is that if you tell the Front Desk your tale of woe ahead of time, they are instructed to get housekeeping not a manager and send you away.) If you have a business card, have it ready for additional credibility.
If you have time, and are not satisfied, try to make an appointment with one of the above either that night or next morning. And as I had to do once for a bad Radisson Hotel experience in Chicago, I actually sent a certified letter to the Hotel Manager and the CEO of Radisson. (They had bumped me on arrival even after I reconfirmed a late arrival for a business trip and indicated I was a woman traveling alone.)
Other health concerns: buffets in hot climates, water from a pitcher on the airplane (you want it from a branded mineral water bottle), telephones in dirty or poor areas ( wipe them down with one of your handi-wipes), ice cubes and unwashed salad, fruit etc in poor countries, Solution: eat off the menu, obviously. If you are dying for salad, buy your own in the market, fill the ice bucket with tap water, add purification pills, let dissolve per instructions, and then soak your tomatoes etc for a minimum of 30 minutes. This might sound like non luxury hotel behaviour, but I have done it in private rather than risk disease. And if you are in a hotel room with a mosquito net, ie. on safari. Use it!
But getting back to bedbugs, statistically you will probably never meet one. But if you are a bug-phobic person (Entomophobic in the trade), buy yourself a sleep sack from a camping store and after you check the bed for inhabitants, remove the sheets and blankets and sleep in your sack. I would never do that, frankly, as a good shot of scotch, sans local water and sans ice cubes, would put me out. ) I do own a sleep sack and use it for extra warmth on very rough trips however.
Scratch Scratch.
Phyllis Stoller
The NYC Insiders Guide
for women who aren't kids
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
 |
|
||
