I’ve heard of greasing the palms of various hotel workers, but until now, I’ve never heard of greasing the walls. But that’s what this guy did–coated every object in his motel room with the contents of 14 jars of Vaseline.

"He looked normal," booking officer Anthony Rando said. "He didn’t look slippery," Rando said, but he carried the smell of petroleum jelly with him into the jail.

And you thought your attendees were weird…

No, but guests might be. According to this, "A recent survey conducted at major hotel chains across the U.S. reveals that most hotel bath, shower and sink fixtures deliver water at scalding temperatures." Scalding showers were found at almost 90 percent of the hotels surveyed. The problem is that, on the other hand, if the water isn’t hot enough, it will contribute to bacterial growth.

Despite the movie title, while Some Like it Hot, your attendees probably don’t want a pre-meeting scald. Another thing to add to your site inspection checklist: Ask if the hotel showers use P-valves in their showers and, if they do, how often they adjust them. If they have the newer, temperature-pressure adjusting valves, it’s not a problem, according to the item.

This item from Hotel Online from AAA about hotel ratings says:

One large hotel booking Web site is spending millions of dollars on a national advertising campaign touting a non-existent team of hotel evaluators. While intended to be humorous, this campaign draws attention to what has become a concern for consumers - companies that don’t physically check out the hotels they rate."

Well, isn’t that confusing? AAA, which does do its own inspections for its Diamond ratings, offers some tips on what to look for, including: Ask whether the site does its own ratings, and if it does, what criteria it uses. AAA also recommends asking "how long the rating organization has been evaluating properties, how many properties are rated each year, whether there is a financial obligation between the rating organization and the listed properties, and whether the rating criteria or guidelines are published."

If you’re like me (and most of your attendees), breathing recirculated air on planes and in hotels, combined with spreading germs shaking hands with all those colleagues at the conference can end up making people sick. The good news is that all those Hershey Kisses and other chocolates passed out on the show floor like, well, candy, actually can help keep coughs under control.

Great, another excuse to chow on chocolate!

And why not? Especially now that business air travel costs are down to ‘99 levels.

According to the Business Travel Monitor, a survey compiled by AmEx subsidiary Eclipse Advisors, we can thank the low-cost carriers, who are pushing the major carriers down and putting the lid on prices for popular routes.

The average one-way fare paid for a business trip on a basket of domestic routes studied by researchers was $217 in the third quarter, down 10 percent from the period a year earlier. One example of the impact of low-cost carriers is in Philadelphia, where Southwest Airlines started operating in May against US Airways. In the third quarter, the average fare for a business trip in Philadelphia fell 40 percent. In Cleveland, which Eclipse said had not yet felt the full impact of low-cost carrier pressure, the average fare rose 16 percent. In addition, WorldTravel BTI, a corporate travel-management company in Atlanta, reported that one in four clients said they had increased their travel budgets in 2004, a higher proportion than expected.