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Air Conned: How hotel room thermostats are useless.
The Wall Street Journal published an article on January 25th confirming the suspicions that many frequent hotel guests have always wondered…does the thermostat on the wall actually work? NO! In the video below Scott McCartney the author of the article is interviewed and discusses various techniques hotels use to limit the variance of an in room thermostat, and then goes on to tell us about some blogs that have posted the codes to bypass them.
No you aren’t going through the change. Your hotel is just saving some.
per the WSJ
The New York Hilton has a system that keeps unoccupied rooms at 78 degrees and then automatically sets the thermostat to 74 when a guest checks in. The system cools the room down in about 5 minutes. Companywide, new temperature control systems have helped Hilton reduce energy use by 14% since 2009
I’ll also point out that you can read the published article by finding Scott on Twitter. Most times articles that are limited to subscription via the main site are accessible using a twitter link. Just an FYI. In the published article he mentions,
Hotels are retrofitting wireless wall thermostats and door switches in some rooms now that devices are cheaper to buy. The advantage is that they can be centrally controlled. Guests may still fiddle with old knobs on the PTAC units, but it won’t get cooler or warmer. “We can read the room’s temperature and comfort, find out when you come, find out when you go and we can control it,” Mr. Gaines says.
So you can hit that button as much you want, but unless you override it and go into VIP mode…it ain’t changing. Reminds me of an elevator. Let’s be honest, we’ve all hit the elevator button multiple times knowing full well that it doesn’t come any faster. Something does feel good about that, right?
Interested in those blogs? Going into VIP mode? You can find them here. I also ran across an article written by Gary Leff a few years back.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.