The Brandywine Valley, to an extent, yes. You'd be surprised how well our packages that involve admissions to Winterthur and Longwood Gardens sell. Granted, these packages are competing for market share with Holland America and real estate in Palm Beach County, but yeah.

Anyone going to be at IAH later today? We have to go and pick up a friend of Mrs. photog72. She's flying in on CO 411 from EWR for the weekend.

When I lived in PHL, I never thought of that area as a vacation destination. I looked at it as part of the PHL destination, especially the tax free shopping part. I'm guessing that nationally, people don't think of Wilmington as a vacation area. They just think about Wilmington as their bank's HQ.;)

For some, I think it's the principle of paying for someone to park your car and bring it back to you when you are perfectly capable of doing it yourself (hey, it's good exercise! :)). If valet is the only option, I have no problem paying for it, but given the choice I will almost always select self-parking (unless it makes more monetary sense to go with valet). My preference to self-park doesn't change based on the price of the hotel or event at which I am parking.

ETA: I just want to make sure the above does not come across as me saying that I think valets are useless or that I don't value the services they offer. This is definitely not the case. I just don't think they're for everyone in every situation.

Maybe that's part of it: al a carte pushback: "Hey, I'm dropping four bens a night on this dump, and you nickel and dime me to park?" Ownership and revenue segmentation are probably not concepts easily learned at the front door.

Good morning box.

True, but isn't a big point of leisure travel (to resorts or destinations, particularly) -for most everyone, I'd guess- to have done for you what you have to do as part of your day to day life?

Agreed. To me, it's just one more of those things in life where money gives one a choice (albeit a minor choice in this case). If it's the only option, or, as sdm1130 said, it is a better value than the self-parking...OR if it's pouring rain and/or I'm in a hurry and/or carrying a lot of stuff or some other such factor, then sure, it's a nice choice to have. But absent those factors, then there's no reason for me to make that choice on that particular day.

Sure, a resort can offer many different services/options, and the luxury is being able to choose which ones are worth it/important to each individual. Particularly if things are offered a la carte.

There are apparently some pretty savvy marketers out there who are managing to sell packages. We just had a group of 20-some who came up from IAH just to go to the mansions and the gardens. This was the same group that lobby renovation work was halted for as they walked through.

I'm generally with you unless the convenience factor is undeniable. When I worked in Atlantic City and was known to go to Morton's every so often, I would valet at Caesars because the front door to Morton's was less than 25 feet from the porte cochere.

Some of leisure clientele would take hours to get to their self-parked car, and for much of our client base as heavy on biz travel as it is, it's more so they don't have to be bothered...this would include them being told that their car will be there in 10 minutes, and them showing up 45 minutes later wondering why the car isn't there.

Not at all; I agree.

Most of our clientele are expense accounters. Point taken, but for the majority it's a moot one.

I have to get in the shower and go back to work. I feel like I was just there.

Point well taken. And it should be about choice. Parking contracting notwithstanding, it would not be equitable, and unwise, to embed that cost into the bill; e.g., it would rankle anyone not using a car.

But I think my point above does stand: for many people, the price they paid on Hotels.com, or where ever, might include some sticker shock which makes al a carte items or services *seem* inequitable.

Just read a news blurb about the finals of the National Geographic Bee which were apparently held the other day. The winning question was the identification of Cap-Haitien as the largest city in northern Haiti; I would NOT have known that. :confused:

I imagine we MUST have some people in here who did this in middle school, yes?

(I remember it being nerve-wracking but rather fun - went to the OH state competition 2 years but never made the finals. Scored a nice atlas, a couple of savings bonds and other random prizes...)

And, sadly, it is a STAGGERINGLY unbalanced activity in terms of gender lines - which is even more perplexing considering that the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee, which is a similar type of thing (head-to-head competition, memorization, etc.), has been pretty close to even over the years. I would have thought that if one had to stereotype, that girls of that age are better at highly-disciplined-book-learning, no?

And I have to go pick up some alfalfa. Given the temp already has an 8 handle, going to the 9's, and there is no one here to order me to do otherwise, I think my shower will be deferred.

Edit:
Aw, man! I just looked, and it's 90/56% already, heat index 96 (Duh, it's noon). Ecuador...hmm...

^