Air travel may not be the most sustainable mode of transportation, but it's becoming increasingly easy for consumers to choose a greener ride to and from the airport. Back in 2008 we saw the Seattle-Tacoma airport begin offering free electricity for plug-in cars, and now the Portland International Airport has set up a bike assembly station.

Located on the airport's lower terminal roadway, the new bike assembly station will enable people travelling with bicycles to more easily assemble and disassemble their bikes before and after flights. Portland is already well-known for its bicycle-friendliness, of course—it even has a bike path connecting to the airport. Accordingly, the assembly station can now be used by travellers and airport employees alike to get ready for a commute along that path, as well as by visitors to the city needing to disassemble their bike for a return flight home. As an extra service, Travel Oregon and the Port of Portland have made basic bike tools available for check-out at the airport's State Welcome Center along with literature about bicycling resources in the region.

With many travellers visiting Oregon and southwest Washington to take advantage of bike tourism and to participate in the region’s many bicycle events, the Portland airport's bike-friendliness makes extra good sense. Given the countless universal advantages of the bicycle, however—and the corresponding explosion in its popularity—Portland's example is ripe for emulation in any bicycle-friendly city around the globe.

Website: www.portofportland.com
Contact: contactus@portofportland.com

Spotted by: airlinetrends.com

For St. Louis's City Museum, salvaged garbage helps create a hyperlocal feel. For the Save the Beach Hotel, it's not just a building material but also a warning about the current state of Europe's beaches.

Led by Mexican Corona Extra beer brand, the Save the Beach effort aims to recover at least one European beach per year from destruction by pollution and other human-caused damage. Last year it was Capocotta beach in Rome, and votes are currently being accepted online for this year's choice. To draw more attention to the challenge, the Save the Beach effort this summer built a hotel from garbage collected off Europe's beaches. Created by German artist HA Schult and installed next to Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, the Save the Beach Hotel was open from June 3 through 6. Some 12 tons of garbage collected from Europe's beaches—more than a million pieces—were used to build the two-story structure, which could accommodate up to 10 people. Its very first guest was former supermodel Helena Christensen.

Schult explains: “The philosophy of this hotel is to expose the damage we are causing to the sea and the coastline. We live in the era of trash and we are running the risk of becoming trash ourselves. Do we really want this world?”

If a picture is worth a thousand words, just imagine how many could be packed into a trash-based hotel—not just about the problem at hand but also about the Corona brand's eco-generosity. One to be inspired by! (Related: Pop-up cafe is a (straw) monument to sustainability.)

Website: www.coronasavethebeach.org
Contact: www.coronasavethebeach.org/contacto/

Spotted by: Martina Meng

The march of the hotel alternatives continues, this time with the arrival of a home-swapping service aimed squarely at the upper echelon of homes. Luxe Home Swap allows people with high-end dwellings to swap accommodation with others all over the world.

“Luxe” homes don't necessarily have to be luxurious, UK-based Luxe Home Swap stresses; rather, they simply need an attractive location and home feel. Examples currently on the site include a 5-bedroom, 5-bath home in Sri Lanka, for example, as well as a 2-bedroom apartment in Gothenburg, Sweden. To use the service, homeowners simply pay a GBP 99 annual membership fee and begin browsing the homes listed on the site. Once they find one they'd like to swap with, they contact the owner to discuss the details via secure messaging and sign a digital contract. Members can make as many swaps as they'd like over the course of a year; Luxe Home Swap even offers a second year of membership free for those who didn't succeed to find a good swap in their first.

Trust is a big part of the success of any home exchange, and we've seen that addressed by focusing on homeowners who work in the same industry or are connected on Facebook. By focusing on wealthier clients, Luxe Home Swap achieves a similar end. (Related: Holiday sublet service offers hotel style amenities — Cutting-edge architectural dwellings for holiday rent — Hotel rooms scattered across the city of Linz.)

Website: www.luxehomeswap.com
Contact: info@luxehomeswap.com

Spotted by: Sunday Times via Sara Al Mulla

There are now countless places out there for consumers to voice their opinions about brands large and small, and hotels are by no means exempt. In fact, online reviews are now the most critical measure of guest satisfaction and the top factor influencing where travelers decide to stay, according to Revinate. That, in turn, is why the San Francisco company recently unveiled a hotel-specific service that aims to bring structure, performance tracking and actionable guidance to that never-ending stream of social media.

Launched in March, Revinate collects every review, news story, blog post, photo, video and social media mention of its client hotels and presents them in a single intuitive dashboard that's accessible online. Revinate can also do the same for competitors' reviews and social media activity, giving clients new competitive insight into their relative strengths and weaknesses. Its Social Media Scorecard, in turn, converts those online reviews into a detailed guest satisfaction report, tracking key performance metrics and competitive benchmarks. The tool's powerful analytics, meanwhile, provide real-time, easy-to-use reports that highlight what's important, with charts, exportable data, competitive intelligence and flexible options.

Finally—and perhaps most important—is that, similar to Brands in Public, Revinate also makes it easy for hotels to join the conversation by responding to reviews and communicating with consumers via social media. TweetConcierge, for example, is Revinate's hotel-specific Twitter client with features designed exclusively for hotels, including the ability to track Twitter campaigns and measure click and sales activity generated across multiple promotional tweets. Revinate clients include Peninsula Hotels, Trump Hotel Collection, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, Kimpton Hotels, InterContinental, Andaz, White Lodging and Peabody Hotel Group. A video tour is available on screenr. The service's pricing is based a hotel's size and average daily rate, approximating the value of one incremental booking per month, Revinate says.

There can hardly be any brands left that doubt the power of social media. Will they be the victim of that transparency tyranny, or will they turn it into transparency triumph and—indeed—foreverism, as our sister site would call it? That's up to them, and how actively—and proactively—they get involved. As Revinate says, “millions of travelers are talking, and hoteliers must listen.” (Related: SeatGuru for hotel rooms — Analytics tools help music bands uncover local demand.)

Website: www.revinate.com
Contact: www.revinate.com/contact

We've seen airports engage consumers with everything from free dancing lessons and light therapy to a four-storey slide that rewards duty-free spending. The latest innovation? Gatwick Airport's Runway Models contest.

Launched in late May by the UK airport and Storm Model Management, the Runway Models contest invites Gatwick travellers to submit a photo of themselves either online or by taking advantage of the dedicated photo booths in the airport's departure lounges. The closing date is 12 July; all entries are posted online, where they're available for public voting. Once all the entries are in, Storm's model scouts will choose four guys and four girls to go through to the next stage, while public votes will choose an additional guy and girl to advance; those chosen by the public will also win GBP 500 in Gatwick retail shopping vouchers. The Final 10 will then be invited to a “model bootcamp” and photo shoot where they'll spend the day with industry professionals learning the modelling basics as well as having their hair and makeup done. The guy and girl that impress Storm the most will be selected as the final winners of a year's “New Faces” contract and a debut at London Gatwick Fashion Week in August. Gatwick, meanwhile, will donate GBP 1 to the Great Ormond Street Hospital charity for every photo uploaded.

There are myriad ways to impress and engage consumers, but sometimes there's just nothing like a good, old-fashioned contest; if it can tap into consumers' vanity, so much the better. Beat that, traditional advertising! ;-) (Related: Lottery contest appeals to dog owners' gravanity — Contest replaces ad campaign for Nissan launch — Contest asks fans to design their own doughnut.)

Website: www.gatwickevents.com/runwaymodels/
Contact: feedback@gatwickairport.com

Spotted by: airlinetrends.com