What makes a hotel green / hotels of the future?

http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/07/index.cfm

Coming to that article made me remember my last trip, to Cologne, and the decision to start using AirBNB instead of hotels.

What could hotels do to keep up in the competition?

• Lend out jogging equipment

I wanted to go running in the morning (the hotel had awesome neighbourhood, including some Roman time water channels), but had left my running shorts back home (won't do that again).

Why cannot hotels lend out jogging shoes, shorts and t-shirts and then launder them after the job. No smelly clothes hanging in the hotel room. They wash bedclothes anyways, this wouldn't be so much different. I'd be happy for 7-8 eur, maybe even 10 added for this service. But I need to be able to count on it, ahead of trip (i.e. having the right shoe size available).

Why not do this? Because no-one seems to want it?

Go further. Lend out bicycles (some hotels undoubtably would already do so). Team up with a close by tennis court (which was there). Meet other hotel guests for a play of tennis. Neat.

Hotel chains must pump up their "activism" and "eco-friendliness" in such way.

In the US, one can add healthy breakfasts to the list. At least way back, it used to be sugar only. Naturally, someone should first instruct the Americans what healthy actually means. :)

• Better booking, preferably a mobile app

Hotels must make finding the right stay as easy as AirBNB has done it. One of my favourites is the "I need the room THIS NIGHT" button topmost on the AirBNB user interface. Though I'd never actually use that button, simply having it there gives me confidence that I'm in good hands. Ever tried to find a hotel room for the next night? Might be a failing endeavour.

• Get a face

Instead of call-in numbers and queueing, have a real person contactable over mobile chat, SMS or otherwise. Again, like AirBNB beautifully does.

So - in short I would argue future of hotels is already here. It's got a name and a business model. It's AirBNB.

Note: I wrote this before having taken a single trip with AirBNB, yet. I may change my mind.

The Blog that did not Let me in.

http://www.smartplanet.com/

It's a nice looking site. Great stuff, gorgeous layout.

Hey, I want to add a comment. Sign-in...? okay.

No Twitter integration. Dammit. Must use a lowsy pw. :/

And then this eternal loop, never ever getting me into actually giving the comments!

I tried with Safari 5, Firefox 5. Cleared cookies. Waited overnight. Sent a message to their support (no reply). I should have simply given up. :(

Anyways, here's what my comment would have been:

Not quite true..

Tesla is only one sample. A lot has changed in the auto industry since they started their development. Electricity has become the trend and everyone is planning for e-mobility. This brings part cost down and offers pieces "off-the-shelf" that earlier needed to be manufactured by particular car companies. In other words, car making has become modular in a way that happened to PC's in the 1980's and 90's.

Two sample cases. ERA, the Electric Race About X-prize contender, a project built by a team of Finnish students. Magnificient car. Budget? 1 million euros (half of that goes to the special battery). Wheel engines. Gorgeous drivability. If you them 1 million, they have promised to build you one. That's. not. really. much.

http://www.arcticstartup.com/2010/04/09/era-the-finnish-x-prize-contender

Gordon Murray Design (UK), and their T.27. Gordon Murray does not make cars. They make car factories. But to show the point, they also made this car. Very safe. Gorgeous design (at least me thinks). You can fit two of these, next to each other on a regular lane (= bypassing doesn't need lane change). Three fits in one parking box. Time it took them? Around 1 year.

http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/press.php

And then there's this thing. PRT transportation that is like electric car, only grade-separated and automated. Really, these things are technically as easy to do as golf carts.

http://www.ultraprt.com/

So with these cases (and some others not listed) I dare to say Tesla looks rather oldish, and there indeed is innovation in the air when it comes to transport. Wether we get new stuff actually on the road fast enough is another matter. Investments will help. They don't have to be in the billions. 10M is great for any of the projects above!

- asko

Suggestion to Safari (and other browsers) - viewing pages from cache

If Internet connection is down, but Safari has the requested HTML in its cache, instead of showing "Network diagnostics" button it could also show "Show from cache". This would allow returning to a page one recently viewed.

I'm visiting India, and we just had an electric blackout. I would have wanted to carry on reading the economist page I had open earlier. History still has it, but there's no way in Safari to read the cache copy instead of the online.

The same issue also happens if you are travelling, and don't have wlan connection. Ability to browse the sites kept in cache would sometimes make the difference in finding crucial information or not.

We have a problem - fitting PRT to India

We have a problem.

I have a startup for making light weight PRT transportation, and India is supposed to be a main market. Today, when walking the streets in Mangalore, I realized the solution won't fit for two reasons.

( A little disclaimer first: Mangalore is not really suffering from too much urban growth or traffic congestion. Currently, it is not in a need of PRT. But some parts of India (i.e. Bangalore) desperately are and these issues might abound there as well. )

#1 - Electric wires *everywhere* in the air

We cannot think of putting traffic at 3,5m if there are electric wires at 5. This sometimes occurs is western cities as well, but much, much less since there cables are more underground. I.e. city lighting is done with underground cables.

#2 - Movement patterns are different

We have been riding around the center with rickshaw. The problem is that at least in Mangalore, there are no suburbs or other "natural areas of movement", as I like to call them. No "city within city" but in order to get stuff and go places, people travel here and there, seemingly randomly. I guess the lack of city planning has caused this. Anyways, it's a fact. No suburbs.

That means two things: gradual introduction of PRT is a doomed idea. In order for a system to be usable, it must reach places. A track covering some particular part of a homogenous city is useless.

Second, an introduction to a whole city (which I think is utopian anyways) would cause major havoc among rickshaw drivers and others losing their livelyhood. Not so with gradual introduction (if that were possible) since the drivers could continue business nearby.

Solution?

I cannot see a solution to these issues, which is okay in itself. PRT should not be pushed into places where it does not fit, or brings little additional value. We must be careful with that once the hype stage of these tracks comes - it is a disgrace if they end up destroying local life instead of enforcing it.

The air wires probably will be put into cables eventually - at least that is what happened in the west. Maybe in a monsoon climate it's actually better to have wires in the air?

At least in bigger cities, rich people are getting their own "suburbs", but they are not large enough for an internal transport network. And for such rich people walking wouldn't normally hurt. The idea of a PRT track connecting such apartment islands with selected malls and selected workplace feels like a disgrace as well.

If you have a solution to this, please comment or send a tweet to @bmdesignhki.

Thanks.