English
Travel ecstasy
Budget hotels from Berlin to Bali: Stay in Madras for $4, Tokyo for $37, or New York for $99. Excerpt from the book 'Cheap Hotels' by Daisann McLane
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Attack of the killer bedspreads
They have names: Captiva, Vanessa, Sussex, Ikat, Royal Manor and New Jamestown. I discovered this on the Internet one afternoon, in search of a clue to a mystery that has puzzled me for years. Why do all budget American hotel rooms have the same five ugly patterns?
Okay, I'm exaggerating. There are more than five hideous patterns circulating in the Bedspread Industry. Maybe twenty or thirty. But just who is responsible for these atrocities of clashing, swirling colors, these unfortunate Rorschach splotches, these profusions of cabbage roses and palm trees?
As I've always suspected, the national proliferation of ugly polyesterfilled covers has its roots in the proverbial bottom line. In the United States, there are several large textile and bedding manufacturers catering to the needs of the hotel industry. In most American cities, you can't put just any blanket on a bed-it has to meet the local fire code standards. Hence, the polyester so heavily coated and treated with flame retardant that it feels like plastic bubble wrap.
Then there's laundry-for any hotel, a big expense, but for budget hotels, a crippling one. As you work your way down the hotel chain, it's an expense that gets pinched. A reporter for the Des Moines Register once called a few local hotels and asked them how long they waited in-between washings. "At the West Des Moines Marriott, management says the bedspreads are changed every six weeks," he was told. "At the Motel 6 in Des Moines, bedspreads are laundered every three months unless there is a 'visible' stain."
It would take a forensic expert to separate the design from the stains on Captiva, Vanessa, Sussex, Ikat or Royal Manor.
I try not to think about such things as I pull down the garish coverlet and brace myself for another night in a cheap motel. I can deal with the aesthetic attack that a horrific bedspread provokes, but I can't handle the thought that my bedspread, in the last week of its threemonth shift, may attack me at the molecular level, too.
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Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Attack of the killer bedspreads
They have names: Captiva, Vanessa, Sussex, Ikat, Royal Manor and New Jamestown. I discovered this on the Internet one afternoon, in search of a clue to a mystery that has puzzled me for years. Why do all budget American hotel rooms have the same five ugly patterns?
Okay, I'm exaggerating. There are more than five hideous patterns circulating in the Bedspread Industry. Maybe twenty or thirty. But just who is responsible for these atrocities of clashing, swirling colors, these unfortunate Rorschach splotches, these profusions of cabbage roses and palm trees?
As I've always suspected, the national proliferation of ugly polyesterfilled covers has its roots in the proverbial bottom line. In the United States, there are several large textile and bedding manufacturers catering to the needs of the hotel industry. In most American cities, you can't put just any blanket on a bed-it has to meet the local fire code standards. Hence, the polyester so heavily coated and treated with flame retardant that it feels like plastic bubble wrap.
Then there's laundry-for any hotel, a big expense, but for budget hotels, a crippling one. As you work your way down the hotel chain, it's an expense that gets pinched. A reporter for the Des Moines Register once called a few local hotels and asked them how long they waited in-between washings. "At the West Des Moines Marriott, management says the bedspreads are changed every six weeks," he was told. "At the Motel 6 in Des Moines, bedspreads are laundered every three months unless there is a 'visible' stain."
It would take a forensic expert to separate the design from the stains on Captiva, Vanessa, Sussex, Ikat or Royal Manor.
I try not to think about such things as I pull down the garish coverlet and brace myself for another night in a cheap motel. I can deal with the aesthetic attack that a horrific bedspread provokes, but I can't handle the thought that my bedspread, in the last week of its threemonth shift, may attack me at the molecular level, too.
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