AskDong

The old adage on buying houses is to buy the worst house in the best neighborhood.  The same should be said of hotel rooms.  Many of the nicer hotels and resorts on the beach typically offer at least three different classes of rooms (not including suites).  When I stayed at Caneel Bay, it had in order of best to “worst”, Beachfront, Oceanview, Gardenview, Tennis Court view room. This week at my stay at Hanalei Bay Resorts I had the option of Oceanview, Garden View, and Mountain View.  Personally as long as there’s a view I’m pretty happy.   I’ve stayed in rooms that have looked into a brick wall, and know that I don’t like sleeping in a cave.  However, I’m going to look at the ocean, I’m more likely to step out of my room and do that.

When you’re staying at any hotel you’re paying for more than just the room or the view, especially at nicer hotels and resorts.  You’re paying for access to different facilities.  At Caneel Bay, free snorkel and other watersport rental (such as small catamarans and windsurfing boards) came with every room not just the expensive beachfront rooms. You’re paying for impeccable service.  This service generally remains impeccable even when you stay in the “cheap” rooms.

I compared quickly some the recent quoted rates for some resorts, and the price difference between rooms can be remarkable.

I’ve pulled the rates for the 2nd week of January from the official websites except for Hanalei Bay.  These rates may not be the best rates available.  Hanalei Bay is primarily a condo resort, i.e. many of the rooms are individually owned or part of timeshare, and as result does not have official website that I know.  For Hanalei Bay, I pulled a quote from Yahoo travel.  The price spread at the Marriott in Puerto Rico is much more narrow because the rooms are in large high rise.  The properties in Kauai and St. John are much more varied.  Caneel Bay has individual bungalows for example scattered on the property, and as a result the beachfront properties are unique in being right on the beach.  Still, I’m not sure and extra $425 a night is worth that convenience.  I rather stay near the tennis courts and walk an extra five minutes to the beach.

I’m writing this from a Hotel in Honolulu.  Yes, I’m yet on another vacation.  This is however a vacation of fortunate circumstance.  there’s no way I would book two vacations within 3 weeks of each otherwise.  My girlfriend has a work trip to Hawaii -Honolulu and Maui.  As a result her flight to and from Hawaii is paid in addition to hotel rooms for the first 4 nights.

I only had to pay my way, and pay for rooms for the last 4 nights which we’ll  be visititing Kauai.   For my flight, I used miles. Hawaii is fantastic deal on miles.  It’s easily the best bang for the miles for those flying from the east coast.  I used 35,000 miles United miles for a flight that would’ve otherwise cost me over $700.   Traveling to Asia which isn’t much further would’ve run 60,000 miles.  Given that I had to use these miles by the end of the year or they would’ve expired, it was a no brainer.  However, I didn’t have much flexibility with the dates.  I’m arriving earlier than I like, and arriving back in Boston later than I like, the morning of Thanksgiving.

• 4 Nights at the Hanalei Bay Resorts in Kauai: $415
• 4 Day Car Rental: $300
• 3 Inter-island flights for two: $300
• Being able to turn my girlfriend’s work trip into Hawaiian Boondoggle: Priceless

A trip to Hawaii for two can easily cost over $3000 for just flights and hotels.  I feel extremely lucky that my trip to Hawaii is costing just a shade over $1000 for all the fixed costs.  I also feel rather indulgent given this is my second vacation in the last month.

Anyhow, I will continue to post daily entries. I actually have a bit of downtime the first couple days when my girlfriend’s working and I’m sans car at the Hotel.

Last week I pondered what the environmental impact of my last vacation was. I took a cruise from New York City to Bermuda on the Explorer of the Sea. The technical specifications indicate the boat has six Wärtsilä 12V46C diesel engines which supply 75,600 kwh (75 MWh) of total power. My estimate is that while cruising between the ports, the engines are probably at about 3/4 full power, and at the dock the engines are merely supplying electricity to the boat (20 MWhs). Megawatt Hours or MWhs are the units of energy commonly used in the electricity industry. The estimate of use are just guesses on my part - I really don’t know how RoyalCaribbean operates the Explorer since I missed the Bridge tour. For reference a typical New England Resident consumes 653 kWH or .653 MWh per month (1000 kWs make a MW). Last month according to my electric bill I consumed 303 kWh of power at home. However given that I spend half of my waking time in my air conditioned office, a better estimate of my total energy use is 800 kwH a Month or 26.6 kwH/day.

The other useful comparison is not just looking at overall energy usage, but also looking at the distance traveled. I didn’t just get on a cruise ship and stay there. I got on cruise ship and traveled to Bermuda. Here’s a comparison of the efficiency of the different modes of transportation Traveling by airline is one of the least efficient methods of transportation. The two jets powering a typical Boeing 737 are functionally nearly identical to gas turbines used to produce electricity. Each engine produces the equivalent of 15 MW of power for a total of 30 MW for a 2 hour flight between Boston and Bermuda. However unlike the Explorer of the Sea which transports over 5000 people, a 737 jet only moves 180 passengers or so at the most.

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I just go back from my cruise, and am catching up on my blog.  While I did have Internet Access on the cruise ship, it was .50 cents a minute.  As a result, I wrote my blog entries, and minimized my time online to just pasting and posting my articles.   I still ended up spending $10 for internet access.

Overall a good cruise. I’ve now been on three different cruise lines; Carnival, Norwegian, and now Royal Caribbean. Norwegian definitely had the best food. Royal Caribbean the best entertainment options. Carnival was my first, and was definitely the most convenient as I was able to take a cheap 3 day cruise.

While I enjoyed the cruise, I always leave the cruise (and any resort) experience feeling guilty. I always feel guilty about “living it up” when I know so many of the people serving me often come from impoverished 3rd world countries. Because cruise ships are typically registered in the Bahamas and do not operate technically in the U.S., they are not beholden to U.S. labor laws.  As a result cruise ships pay many of the service people the bare minimum in terms of wages.  Nearly all the compensation comes in the form of gratuities. This is not to say these are bad jobs for the people working at them. For many people these jobs represent a fantastic opportunity to lift themselves and their families from poverty.  They work hard, and I believe deserved to be tipped well.

The other sense of guilt I feel is purely on consumption. There’s so much food on board. I wonder how much of it ends up going to waste? I also wonder how much oil does a cruise ship use sailing around? It might be that cruise ships are very good about conserving food and energy. It’s not like I wouldn’t be eating and using electricity at home. However, the truth is I don’t know. I plan on spending the next week doing a little more research into the matter, and come up with an environmental impact study.

I’ll be on vacation this week. I’m going on a 5 day cruise with my family to Bermuda. My brother was able to spot a pretty good deal back in July leaving out of New York. Since we won’t need to fly, this keeps the cost of the cruise down to just the cost of the cruise itself. The cruise fare is about $520 a person not including taxes and supplemental charges and a little over $600 with those charges on Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Sea, a member of the Voyager series of ships - one of the larger class of cruise ships in service today only topped by the Queen Mary 2 and the Freedom class of ships.

At just over $100/day this represents a fantastic deal for a cruise. One of the reason we were able to get such a great deal is my parents are both are over 55 and qualify for a senior citizen discount. One of the beauty’s of the discount is only one person in the cabin needs to be over 55 for the lower rate to apply to everyone in the cabin. We split the booking of my parents into two rooms, voila we were able to achieve the discount for 5 people. Even without the discount the fare would still have been a good deal at little over $700 a person.

I hope to have my regular schedule of posts, once a day during the weekday and at least one post on the weekend. However, given that I will be on open water most of the time, I can’t guarantee that schedule. I do not expect I’ll be particularly responsive on email or in comments. For that I preemptively apologize.