Independent travelers often have a love/hate relationship with the travel industry. The love: Transportation networks make things easy. Beds of all calibers are usually easy to find. Information about places we've never been to has been collected and bound into books. The hate: The industry's ability to funnel large numbers of people into a single...

It's a question based on the "walk a mile in someone else's moccasins" premise: To fully understand and experience travel, do you have to spend time on the hospitality side as well? Some might argue that not all travelers are customers of the hospitality industry. True, not too many vagabonds will be booking Club Med...

Everywhere you travel, you'll always end up naked with a certain stranger: The shower. The (near) daily ritual of bathing is a sensory riddle, forcing you to figure out a place on the most basic level. Sometimes it's easy and you have a predictable, jet-infused tub to soak in, with surround sound speakers and fluffy...

I was browsing CNN.com's travel section today and found this article entitled "Confessions of a hotel housekeeper" . In the article, Allison Rupp tells all about her experiences as a hotel maid, including some techniques she would use to make things appear cleaner than they really were: Instead of vacuuming, I found that just picking...