Hotel Contessa

Did you know that last year alone, 20% of All holiday makers in the United Kingdom travelled alone? The market for individual holiday makers and travellers is now a very significant part of the travel industry, although often when you look about for good deals for single travellers you would be forgiven for thinking that the reverse was true.

Indeed, it is often the case that people going on holiday alone are penalised for their decision or circumstances, and end up having to pay supplements that leave their bill very little short of what it would have been had they gone on holiday with someone else. It is true, of course, that if 20% of holiday makers are travelling on their own, this means that the vast majority, 80%, are those travelling either as a couple or as a family or other group. Clearly hotels and other holiday accommodation need to cater for the majority of their customers, and so most hotel rooms are equipped with double beds.

A single individual booking a hotel room which has a double bed is effectively taking up two potential spaces that the hotel could have filled, and this could be considered as losing the hotel money. At busy times of the year it is highly probable that by letting a room out to someone staying on their own, they are losing a paying customer, since it is likely that they could just as easily have let the room out to a couple who would each have paid for the room. It isn't just the room costs of course. The hotel will take into consideration that a couple are far more likely to buy drinks at the bar, eat in the restaurant and generally spend much more money than the individual. This represents a considerable loss, and so by charging a supplement for the individual traveller, they recoup at least part of this loss and make the blow a little less painful.

Despite this seeming to be a terribly unfair way of doing business, at the end of the day, it is exactly that - a business. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that hotels are purely there for our holidaying pleasure. They're there to make money, end of story.

Of course, it is less painful for the hotel if a single traveller is using a double room, but not occupying this at the loss of a couple, since many rooms are vacant, and other customers won't have to be turned away. In this way, choosing to stay at a time of year that is less popular for couples, such as holiday seasons, or special events, will decrease the chance, or at least the cost, of any such individual supplement.

If a hotel insists on charging you this extra fee, then look into the idea of getting something in return - possible a free upgrade, or breakfast thrown in? If they refuse to meet you part way on this, then it may be worth looking around and finding a hotel which is more amenable. It may well be that the hotel decides at that point that one paying guest is at least something, and offers you something in return.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant about luggage, cruises, hotels, and shopping. You will find the best marketplace for luggage, cruises, hotels, and shopping at these sites for bags, luggage, hotels, single travellers, double occupancy, and shopping.

Hotel And Motel95989
Howard Johnson Motel12175
The Motels23494
Hotels44318
Aaa Motels84952

Well Darlings,

There has to be a reason for it. It is unnatural. Perhaps it is to do with some of the modern foods people eat these days? Or something in the coffee? I hope it isn't anything to do with all the Chinese ingredients companies now add to so many of our foods today without telling us. If Chinese food has been killing the dogs in America and making people ill, as I read recently, I don't want to be eating it! Whatever it is I'm looking for, it needs to be found quickly for it is responsible for a pronounced lack of common sense in too many people. Some of these people shoulder enormous responsibilities, and we rely on them to use their common sense to keep us from harm. One such person is the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers.

Leyhill Open Prison in Gloucestershire - it has no perimeter security fence whatsoever - has been ordered to house up to 50 very high risk criminals, including a "relatively large group of men" sex offenders. This is the prison where almost 400 inmates simply walked out between 1999 and 2006. During that time the inmates here were disappearing at the rate of more than one a week. Mostly they were those convicted of robbery and burglary offences, but alarmingly they also included 22 murderers and 7 rapists.

Anne has at least had the common sense to question the "appropriateness" of placing such higher-risk inmates in open jails, but still wallows around in a fudge of uncertainty. Like so many today, if it isn't written down somewhere exactly what to do, she appears to be at a loss. She talks of the guidance on whether such offenders should be in open prisons as being "unclear", and complains there are no clear rules on whether high risk prisoners should be put on normal resettlement programmes where they work in local colleges or companies. What? She needs guidance and rules for this? Has she no savvy?

I have to question why any person should need to be guided in order to know whether or not murderers and sexual offenders, some of them rapists, should be kept in open prisons where they can simply walk out. Even just a modicum of common sense will say: no, they must always be kept in secure accommodation - and yet strangely it has been the Prison Service's policy to send these offenders to Leyhill for years.

In my mind, whoever decides prison policy might well benefit from a trip to the convent in Lisieux where St. Thrse, the Patron Saint of Common Sense, spent some years - and if they don't find any, perhaps they should stay there! Other than that they should be forced to take up residence with their families somewhere close to Leyhill - given time, I'm sure a few of the inmates would love to pop in on them to say thanks!

I hate having to bring it up yet again, it is becoming tedious, but it really does need to be kept in the news. Our appalling NHS has suffered a scathing attack by the Scottish newspaper the Daily Record under the front page headlines: Scotland's Killer Hospitals. The paper revealed that almost 1 in 10 patients pick up an infection in a Scottish hospital, and in one Glasgow hospital the rate is nearly 1 in 5. The hospital acquired infections (HAIs) kill more than 500 patients a year in Scotland alone and cost the NHS a staggering 183million.

In England and Wales, where HAIs are almost as prevalent, to add to this deplorable situation we now learn that more than 24,000 hospital patients were reportedly given the wrong treatment last year. In some cases this has led to serious injury and even death.

Our NHS really cannot be allowed to continue on in this state. It never used to be like this, so why is it now? All the money they are spending - wasting? - on various "health issues" in an attempt to take the focus off their own gross failings must cease immediately, and they must knuckle down and address the real health threat to the nation - themselves! That money needs to be spent in the hospitals cleaning them and teaching the staff and doctors basic hygiene standards. A 1 in 5 chance of catching an infection that might kill you, and if it doesn't it is still most unpleasant, has to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

I have little doubt that someone still with some common sense left needs to be brought in to give those in the NHS the "guidance" and "direction" that so many people cannot seem to function without these days. The worrying factor is: people with common sense are becoming increasingly harder to find.

Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras, 1 for every 14 people - that's more than in the rest of Europe all put together! - and yet we still have some of the worst crime rates in Europe. Cameras are an easy "cop out" for politicians - it makes it look like they are addressing the problem - and whilst cameras have been invaluable recently in tracking the movements of terrorists, so we do need them, they are a long way from being the answer to preventing crime on our streets. Proof of this comes from the Holloway Road in London. With more than a hundred cameras along its two-mile length it is the most spied upon road in Britain, and yet last year, over a period of just 6 months, we're told 430 offences were committed there, including 29 serious assaults, 15 robberies and 32 burglaries.

What does common sense suggest to you? A few more police needed on the street? It's something worth a try, isn't it? But I doubt that they will get them - they'll probably install another couple of cameras, so pulling yet another copper off a street somewhere to stare at a screen.

So, where has all our common sense gone? Have we just lost it, or has it been stolen? Only those who have managed to retain at least some of theirs will know the answer to this one. Common sense has been stolen from us by those who forced us into political correctness. Wherever they encountered it, these people took it away from us. No-one is allowed the freedom now to analyse anything for themselves and come to their own sensible conclusions anymore - to use their own common sense - as we are told precisely how we must react to everything and every situation. We have become little more than a nation of zombies, unable to think for ourselves and just going through the motions of life like some bored repertory actors. However, with Gordon Brown's pledge to bring back competitive sport for our children, there is a slight glimmer of hope on the dark horizon. It needs to be grabbed and nurtured.

Common sense has always said to me that the winners are likely to be the best ones to do the job. Political correctness has for decades taken away competitiveness, so we have never really known who was best - we just guessed, or waited for a palm to be greased! School sports were banned in case those not good at them should feel inferior, and so too for a long time, and for the same reason, were many school examinations. Where common sense said everybody should have equal opportunities and achieve what they could from them, political correctness said everybody should be equal. The former is an admirable concept and is easily attainable; the latter is an utter impossibility, unless we are all dumbed down to the lowest possible denominator.

Political correctness is on par with communism: we are all equal, except we find some are far more equal than others - and they will be the ones who make up the rules. If you still have your common sense with you, it will be immediately apparent that, under this system, those least able to do a good job of making the rules are equally likely to be those doing just that job. Is it any wonder we are in such a state today?

Isn't it about time we threw out political correctness, and started using some common sense? Equal rights for everyone under the law - yes! But an equal (downtrodden) people, where one size fits all - no! We are all individuals. Our Creator made us that way, and no man has the right to change that!

"The Bitch!" 13/07/07.

Michael Knell

Cheep Motels98840
Sandman Motel50272
Embassy Suites Hotel55455
Thunderbird Motel99421
Boutique Hotel20128