From time to time I tend to get on a soap box and share general discourse about things that really have a positive impact on me and my travels. This week I’m in Colorado, staying at a downtown Denver hotel. So, in this vane, I’ll share why I’m so enamored and hopefully you’ll find something you can take and apply to your business travel.

First, I just shared my general distaste for so-called business hotels that charge for their WiFi. I still don’t understand this thought process. Well, maybe I do.

That show “Undercover Boss” where the CEO or head of the company goes undercover to work as one of the minions, is all the rage. Clearly, whoever is running the chains that continue to charge for Internet connectivity never travel for business reasons. Meaning they aren’t on the road with their laptops needing to get work done. Work that requires them to be connected to the Internet.

If these CEO’s were actually required to do the this as a part of their jobs, I believe they would be much better at realizing what a great benefit it would be to offer free WiFi (just like my downtown Denver hotel!)

It’s been many years since I’ve eaten breakfast on a regular basis. When I am able to pick up free coffee (and not just muddy water, but Java that’s worth paying for) I’m always appreciative. Combine that with something healthy like fruit or other nutritious snacks for later in the morning, and the true value of the “Free Continental Breakfast” makes me a very happy business traveler.

Out modern communications systems including our cell phones tend to make the concept of free local calls somewhat a moot point. But you know when making a local call is a good thing for the out of towner? When you are trying to order some food to be delivered to your hotel room.

More than once I’ve been told that delivery was not possible unless I called from a local number (I guess to prove that I was actually in the locale and not crank calling.) When I checked into my room this week and saw the massive freebies I’d receive with my room, I knew that I’d have to chat about it.

If you’re not looking for these types of amenities when you travel, you’re simply going to be spending much more money than you really need to. Hopefully, this little reminder will help you save some dough and get you some pizza delivered after room service is done for the night!

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For people that only travel for fun and pleasure, choosing hotel accommodations tends to be more about what they have to offer and how much they cost. When you travel as much as I do for your job there tends to be a different set of requirements for a business hotel.

Over the years, one thing I really like in my hotels is whether or not they have shuttles to and from the airport. With the amount of competition for business travel dollars, many of the better places to stay have their own branded vans or shuttle buses that will provide you quick and easy service to and from your port of entry.

Even if I know I’m going to rent a car, I like to get to my hotel first, check in, relax a bit and unpack. I almost always tend to stay for several days and if at all possible, I book my appointments to occur the next day after I arrive at a new city.

Another amenity I prefer in my business hotel is wireless Internet connectivity, or WiFi. If I have a choice over similar accommodations and one place wants to charge me to have access to their wireless offerings, I’ll almost always choose the hotel that provides the service for free.

I suppose this is just because I cannot fully get behind the concept of WiFi being a money maker for the hotel. When you consider the number of places I’ve stayed and in fact the number of times I’ve stayed repeatedly at a particular hotel, I know they have made their wireless investment back several times over.

Once the hardware infrastructure is in place, it really costs the hotel company very little to provide the service. So I stand pretty resolute at not going out of my way to pay for access to their Internet offerings.

A final little personal tidbit I like very much to have is some sort of in room kitchenette. Clearly not all business hotels are designed to offer these types of features so I don’t exclude a choice if they are just a normal hotel room.

But where I have a choice that might include a microwave, apartment sized refrigerator and even a stove top, I’ll choose them every time. In all my years, I’ve never had to pay that much more to get those amenities. A few dollars more is fine. I’ve even gotten the bean counting accountants at my company to stop hassling me when I do spend more money on a room with kitchen facilities.

Ah, life is good. At times!

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While here in Seattle I had the chance to head up to see the Space Needle. I totally forgot my phone (with camera) and an actual camera so I won’t be getting any pictures for you this trip. I really enjoyed the photos from my NYC excursion up the Empire State Building (click through and check those out if you’ve not seen the AMAZING views that day in New York City.)

Since I know I’ve let you down by not having any pictures of my own to show you, I’ll instead insert a link to lead you to a View From the Top of the Space Needle. And live no less!

I’m not incredibly savvy on these things, but how ever they are doing it, it is very cool. You can even move the view around nearly 360 degrees. I just think that’s about the coolest thing ever. Makes me happy for some reason. Of course, you’ll see whatever is happening live when you look at that page. It will likely be even more fabulous than what I got to see.

Given that it’s President’s Day, I’ve no meetings scheduled for the day. Really just getting caught up on sales paperwork. Well, not paperwork in the historical sense. ePaperwork, I suppose. Have to make sure my orders and various other data is input into the virtual private network back to the company.

That’s something else I always look for in any business travel hotel I stay at: good, solid WiFi coverage. Cannot tell you how many times in the past I’d get stuck with “free Internet” coverage only to find out that the only room available was in a dead zone. Made me feel like those creepy (in a fun, entertaining way) Verizon Wireless commercials.

When running on the VPN, you need to have extra bandwidth, they tell me, for all of the added security layers or protocols or the armored Brinks truck that hauls our data to the home office. Well, I get that extra pipe here. And boy am I happy to have it.

Heading home late tomorrow night. Looks like my flight is getting into PHX pretty late, so I might consider staying overnight and driving home Wednesday morning. We shall see.

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