WHILE on vacation in Barcelona with her ma last month, Laura Caddick had seen Torre Agbar a lot of people tooling around on red-and-white bikes. But the bikes that she saw everywhere – part of the town’s bicycle-sharing program – were to be used by local residents only. Torre Agbar
fortunately , Ms. Caddick’s hotel, ME Barcelona, had several bikes 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,’ said Ms. Caddick, a sportswear merchandiser from Liverpool, Britain. She and her mother each paid twenty euros, or $26.40 at $1.32 to the EU Dollar, to hire 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 town 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 the cycling opportunities – in Paris, for instance, the check-out meters for the Vlib’, a public bicycle-rental program, will not accept most Yankee mastercards ( they lack acrucial microchip ) – there are many hostels 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,’ asserted Jonathan Barsky, vice president for research at Market Metrix, which gauges customer satisfaction in hospitality corporations.
The bikes, which are sometimes upright models, have proved to be preferred, especially among vacationing guests, though business travelers have been seen to cycle to an appointment, according to several hotels
The Hotel Gates in Berlin, which introduced twelve red bikes 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 chief, adding that more than sixty percent of the guests who fill out the hotel’s customer-feedback test say the bikes are’a highly valuable service,’ and 20 % say they are one of the reasons they selected the hotel.
Astrid Boh, a management specialist from Frankfurt who prepared a room at the Hotel Gates for awork 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 happy she had taken a taxi from the airport instead of hiring a car.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 having the ability 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, possibly for soothing sore muscles after a demanding outing.
But increasingly hotels are investing in their own fleets – and picking models that reinforce the identity of the hotel.
In Aug, Le Meurice, a Parisian hotel that occupies an 1835 palace across from the Tuileries, unveiled five retro-style bikes in the blue-green shade of the oxidized copper rooftops of the town, with matching helmets and front baskets emblazoned with the hotel’s gold logo. Yankee and UK guests in their 30’s have a tendency to be the most avid customers, according to the hotel ; Le Meurice’s sister hotel, the square 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 mountain bikes – the same model that the Liverpool soccer Club, which made use of the hotel as its coaching base for the last two summers, rode to get to and from soccer practice, pedaling in their red-and-black coaching shorts and jerseys while fans lined their trail.
Staff members at the ME Barcelona, part of the Sol Meli hotel chain, visited several bike 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 enjoy being on the fringe of technology,’ expounded Pete Zudyk, vice president for brand invention and communication for Sol Meli.
naturally, some hotels have provided bikes for a number of years. The Hotel Hassler in Rome has had them for two decades, according to Vivian Barsanti, the media and promoting coordinator.
In bike-happy Copenhagen, that has special small traffic lights for cyclists and obviously marked cycling lanes, bicycles have long been a standard hotel offering.
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