All Aboard for the Best About Cruising!

WHILE on vacation in Barcelona with her mother last month, Laura Caddick had seen Torre Agbar lots of people tooling around on red-and-white cycles. But the bikes that she saw everywhere - part of the town’s bicycle-sharing program - were for use by local residents only. Torre Agbar

fortunately , Ms. Caddick’s hotel, ME Barcelona, had many cycles for guests. ‘We rode down to the beach, then to the port and up to the Ramblas, stopping for drinks and lunch along the way,’ claimed Ms. Caddick, a sports wear merchandiser from Liverpool, England. She and her mother each paid twenty EU Bucks, or $26.40 at $1.32 to the EU Dollar, to rent the bikes for 4 hours and felt they saw more of Barcelona than they’d had they taken the Metro from their hotel. ‘We felt we were experiencing the city from a more local point of view.’

in recent times, from Paris to Rome, new urban cycling lanes and public bike-sharing programs have been gaining in popularity. And while some travelers arenot able to hook into all of the cycling opportunities - in Paris, for example, the check-out meters for the Vlib’, a public bicycle-rental program, will not accept most Yank cards ( they lack acrucial microchip ) - there are many hotels that offer guests use of bikes for asmall fee or no cost at all .

‘It’s become a recently discovered way for hotels to show their greenness,’ announced Jonathan Barsky, vice president for research at Market Metrix, which gauges customer satisfaction in hospitality firms.

The bikes, which are generally upright models, have proved to be favored, particularly among holidaying guests, though business travelers have been seen to cycle to an appointment, according to many hostels

The Hotel Gates in Berlin, which introduced 12 red bicycles last May, making them available to guests without charge, has just ordered four more bikes for the summer season

‘Sometimes the guests ask for a bike, and theyare all gone,’ asserted Kirsten Kurbjuhn, the general manager, adding that more than 60 percent of the guests who fill out the hotel’s customer-feedback questionnaire say the bikes are’a highly valuable service,’ and 20 % say they are one of the explanations they chose the hotel.

Astrid Boh, a management specialist from Frankfurt who scheduled a room at the Hotel Gates for a business trip at the end of March, did not know about the bikes before her arrival. But after hearing about them at the reception desk, she was pleased she had taken a taxi from the airport instead of hiring an auto.Torre Agbar.

‘Parking is a challenge in Berlin,’ recounted Ms. Boh, who pedaled to a business meeting, shops and even out to dinner at night. ‘I liked being able to get somewhere fast and get some exercise at the same time.’

Some hotels organize with nearby bicycle shops to have bikes available for guests. A day’s use of a bike is included in the Green, Greener, Berlin package at the Mvenpick Hotel Berlin, which hires the bikes from a local company. The package also includes bath salts, presumably for soothing sore muscles after a demanding outing.

But increasingly hostels are investing in their own fleets - and picking models that brace the identity of the hotel.

In Aug, Le Meurice, a Parisian hotel that occupies an 1835 palace across from the Tuileries, revealed five retro-style bikes in the blue-green shade of the oxidized copper roofs of the town, with matching helmets and front baskets emblazoned with the hotel’s gold trademark. Yankee and UK guests in their 30’s tend to be the most ardent customers, according to the hotel ; Le Meurice’s sister hotel, the piazza Athne, chose zippy red bikes with panniers.

At the Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, guests can check out Scott off-road bikes - the same model that the Liverpool soccer Club, which utilised the hotel as its training base for the last two summers, rode to get to and from soccer practice, pedaling in their red-and-black training shorts and jerseys while fans lined their path.

Staff members at the ME Barcelona, part of the Sol Meli hotel chain, visited many bicycle shops before settling on the silvery fold-up bikes that were introduced in Sep at the hotel, housed in a modernist tower clad in anodized aluminum.

‘We always love to be on the fringe of technology,’ said Pete Zudyk, vice chairman for brand creativity and communication for Sol Meli.

naturally, some hostels have provided bikes for several years. The Hotel Hassler in Rome has had them for two decades, according to Vivian Barsanti, the media and marketing coordinator.

In bike-happy Copenhagen, that has special miniature traffic lights for cyclists and clearly marked cycling lanes, cycles have for a while been the standard hotel offering.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 10:13 pm and is filed under Cruise Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.