Nineteen Dollars Per Night Happiness and Production

The surf was higher, the waters choppy. The island in the distance looked mysterious. Umbrellas dotted the scene and sunbathers flitted in and out of the water as I watched from my third-floor hotel room.

Spending most of my professional life traveling hasn’t slowed me much for searching for new sites and situations. I’ve spent innumerable nights in hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts and campsites for days or weeks on end. Likely I will spend many more in such places, wonderful as home is. I have endured hours searching for the perfect place to stay…ok, occasionally not finding perfect, but merely a place with a ceiling, a lock, and a bed.

Perfection had to wait sometimes.

These days when I am ready to book a room, I go to the multiple online sites I use. They range from Agoda, Priceline, Skyscanner, Hopper, and a host of others, all unknown two decades ago.

I’ve learned that paying more does not always get me more. I’ve been booked into hotels advertising international staff only to discover their English was no stronger than my ever so pathetic and limited language of their country, leaving us both frustrated with the language exchange.

Among the most interesting rooms I have enjoyed was in Abu Dhabi, above the Ferrari World racetrack where on Wednesday evenings, the track turned into a runner’s paradise. My two-room suite came with a bathroom larger than many American bedrooms. Google helped me figure out how to start…