Another reason to use that do-not-disturb sign, brought to you by Cindy at AE on the Verge. You do not want this to happen to you!

Business 2.0 lists some great tips on dealing with some common frequent flyer challenges in this article.

I hadn’t heard of Bumptracker.com before: According to the article, it details “overbooked routes for each airline, the number of passengers bumped per flight, and the compensation offered.” Just one of the handy tips they offer.

As in laptop-less? Now that people are commenting on meetings in real-time through social networking tools, you can’t help but worry that some things are getting out that just shouldn’t go public. So why not just ban laptops, along with BlackBerries and the rest of those insta-communicators?

Personally, I really like this idea, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who would disagree.

Hat tip to the Fabulous Spellos Brothers for the pointer–and who could resist playing with that headline, really?

If you love words, you’d love Verbatim, a quarterly magazine on language where you’ll find explications of such things as lobby lice and bathroom berthas. What, you hadn’t heard of those either? In an item on hotel slang of the 1950s, I found out that lobby lice are similar to lounge lizards, only they hang out in the lobby, natch. Bathroom berthas are trickier: Seems there are some folks who, upon entering their room for the first time, run for the head to head off having to tip the bellhop. That’s just nasty.

Other highlights of this issue that I just feel compelled to share:
* There’s a book called Word Fugitives, which hangs labels on those situations for which there has to be a word, but usually isn’t. Some examples:
Pandephonium: When a cell phone rings and everyone jumps to see if it’s theirs or not.
Afterism: That great retort you think of after the person you want to retort to has left the room.
The author, Barbara Wallraff of Atlantic Monthly, also has an online interactive column that’s worth checking out if you like this sort of thing.
* Another book reviewed in this issue of Verbatim is, Viva la Repartee. It has real comebacks, including this one from Prince Rainier III who, when asked while on a tour of the Houston Astrodome if he’d like something similar in Monaco, said, “Marvelous. Then we could be the world’s only indoor country.”

Nancy Wilson, CMP, who authors one of my favorite new blogs offers this cautionary tale about why you should check to make sure the facility you’re using is actually living up to its green promises. I don’t know why this shocked me so badly, given that housekeeping always washes my towels even when I give them the secret “leave-’em-on-the-rack” signal, but it did. Wow.

Reading this post on Acronym reminds me of a meeting I went to years ago where the speaker kept saying that people could be frank because everything said in the room was “just between us.” But I was there, as an invited journalist, to report on the meeting. It was, needless to say, wicked awkward.

Now that the world is blogging and Twittering and otherwise baring every experience in cyberspace, Scott’s right, we do need to think about how to balance confidentiality and transparency. In some meetings, people do need to know that what is said will be kept off YouTube–I can think of many circumstances where recording and/or repeating confidential information imparted at a meeting could border on illegal.

A meeting I reported on for a few years included a session that was very closed-door, so people in that industry (a rightfully paranoid industry) could share freely without having to worry about word getting out to their bosses or the public at large. Here’s how we handled it: They were told at the beginning that there was a journalist in their midst, and that I would not quote anyone without their express permission. But they also were warned that I was going to write about the general issues they brought up. No one seemed to be fazed at all. And the articles turned out to be pretty interesting, I thought.

I think that the only fair way to handle it these days is to do something similar: Set out the ground rules from the start so everyone knows what’s going on and can behave accordingly. Then if someone does cross the line, the wrath of the others will fall upon him/her, and rightfully so.

I worry that if we don’t put up some conditions on what should and should not leave the room, meetings will end up being so safe and boring that nothing important is accomplished. Or we can all stop worrying so much and just say what we need to say and let it all land where it may. With so much chatter already on the Web, chances are it’ll get lost in the clutter anyway–yeah, right.

While for now we do need to create safe zones in at least meetings, I do foresee a society where we really won’t care about confidentiality, where we live our personal and professional lives in the public realm. We’re already well on the way. The question is, is that a good thing?

for not honoring a room block: The guarantee only means we’ll hold the reservation, not the rooms. Huh? Good thing that an appellate court in New Jersey rejected that argument recently when Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City used it as a rationale for walking people in 26 of the 60 rooms auto-finance firm Onyx Acceptance Corp. had reserved as part of a banquet back in 2001. In fact, the judges called it “Orwellian.” Unbelievably, the hotel is “considering an appeal.”

The appellate decision, citing testimony from a 24-day trial in 2006, described an often-angry scene in the hotel’s lobby. At one point, it notes, an Onyx employee noted the firm had prepaid almost $30,000 for the rooms.

“However, the front desk clerk was unimpressed with that figure and responded by saying, “Ma’am, we have people who spent $30,000 a hand,’ ” the decision recounted.

Hmm, we may be in need of a little customer service training too. Who knows if this would hold up elsewhere, but I would think the decision would be a warning flag to hotels that routinely overbook that some planners aren’t going to take it anymore.

Thanks to MiForum for the pointer.

Especially for those of us who are enjoying a nice gray, cold, drizzly day today: Grow a flower garden. Brightened my morning up a bit anyway.

In my humble opinion, anyway, this webinar series from UNLV is it when it comes to meeting planning. I know I shouldn’t promote it here, since we are affiliated with the series, but really, what’s not to like?

For $99 you get a one-hour live presentation on topics from catering to entertainment and special events, all presented by industry experts (you can view as a group as well as individually). You can view them multiple times, too, since they are recorded and participants have access for two week after the live webinar, so if you miss anything the first time around, you can always go back for more. It may sound like a lot of money, but think about it in relation to a conference session–no flying, no hotel, just pure education at your desktop.

And, since we are affiliated with this series, if you type MNPenton into the Group Discount Box at checkout, you get $20 off the registration fee. If you go, tell ‘em I sent you. Not that it would get you any more discounts, but…

OK, end of shameless plug–please forgive me!

The headline in question? A Hotel GM’s Worst Nightmare: Hotel Security Guard with Lengthy Prior Arrest
Record, Investigated for Assaulting a Teenage Guest and Throwing
the Girl Over Sixth Floor Balcony

I was on the phone with tech support when this one came through in my e-mail, and I had to read it out loud to him–he couldn’t believe it either. People, do at least some rudimentary background checks. This is downright embarrassing.