Wednesday 1 February 2006

Cybertrack - 6

Sleeping in Airports

What do you do when you fly into a strange city (or even one you know, for that matter) at an hour when transport is unavailable or available only at a premium? Or if you have a wee hours flight, but getting to the airport at said wee hour would cost you several body appendages? And then there’s the matter of connecting flights with just enough time between them to make checking into a hotel a pointless exercise. And yes, what if you’re just plain careful, broke or tight-fisted? Simple. There’s a rather large facility available to you that you may not have noticed. The airport building itself. It’s free, since you’ve already paid for the tickets, and in most cases And not just as a spur-of-the-moment decision either. This site helps you plan you trip around airport snoozes, with reports on the facilities, the pros and cons on important stuff like the cost of food, the state of the toilets, the chances of being booted out, and so on, with ratings as well (basically an assessment of whether sleep, comfort and safety are possible). The process is truly democratic, because the listings are contributed by users like yourself, frank and uncensored. There are even unofficial tips from airport staffers, besides a lot of tips and pointers conveniently flagged. And the Features section is worth a fly-by. As of this writing, the site has close to four thousand listings and stories, funny, informative or just plain scary. I don’t think highly of the site’s aesthetics, but the structure is excellent. Have a good flight!

Published in the February 2006 edition of Outlook Traveller, in a column called Cybertrack



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