DL Insighter

FAULTY TORRES - Hotel name brain drain

Once upon a time hotels used to be given solid no-nonsense names like The Royal York, The Hotel Vancouver or Le Chateau Frontenac. Many of these storied properties grew out of gritty railroad tradition and smacked of brave new frontiers and shelter from the storm.  Others, like Basil Fawlty, merely chose to stick family names on their hotels giving the world the Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott brand genre. 

Some used their names, but did it with far greater flair. When he wasn’t inventing salads, William Waldorf Astor created The Waldorf Astor(ia) in his own likeness. There is speculation that he held William in reserve for later use as “W” but Starwood chooses to tell it differently.

At least one hotel name was “found in the translation” - I stop short of saying “purloined”. In 1961 a variation on one of Germany’s most fabled hotel names “Die Vier Jahreszeiten” showed up atop a new motor hotel on Toronto’s (less than fabled) Jarvis Street. Over the intervening fifty years “The Four Seasons” appears to have done fairly well by its borrowed name.

In recent years the hotel business, like the pharmaceutical industry, seems to have run out of good names for new properties. Seldom has any industry gone from grand to bland to just plain silly in such a short time frame.  New York’s Times Square for example is just about to be blessed with the country’s first “Yotel”. If you think there’s something fishy about the name you’re correct, it’s a hotel designed by the folks at “YO! Sushi” a UK sushi chain.

It could have been worse I suppose – at least the Hotel Ass from Cologne didn’t decide to open in the US!

The non-English speaking world is full of “Engrish” hotel names like the “Resist Bacteria Hotel” in Kashgar China, the “Ah Chew” in Singapore and the “Somass Hotel” in Port Alberni …. hold on, isn’t that last one? Oh well!

So, you may be surprised to learn that the winner of the first annual TOT Award for City with the Weirdest Hotel Names isn’t in some third world country, but is none other than Barcelona. As one of the hottest travel destinations in Europe what is really strange about this is that Barcelona is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city in the heart of Europe so it has none of those “Engrish” excuses. 

Just consider this random selection of Barcelona hotel names and see if you can tell me what on earth they were thinking.

Taking a very different slant on names there’s “The Hotel Diagonal Mar Barcelona”, which should not be confused with its rivals the “Diagonal Zero Barcelona Hotel” or the “Raphaelhoteles Diagonal Port”.  

Talk about making it difficult with cab drivers! Ask to be taken to “The Diagonal” and you have only a 33% chance of ending up in the right place. 

The longest name award goes to “The Petit Palace Opera Garden Ramblas Hotel Barcelona.”  Just trips off the tongue don’t you think? 

The shortest name award goes to the “Omm” which lends itself perfectly to a “Who’s on first” sketch with that same diagonally challenged Spanish cab driver. 

Q. “Where you wanna go?”  

A.  “Omm”

Q.  “Okay, lemme know when you make up your mind.”

For gregarious types who like a busy hotel, then the place for you in Barcelona has to be “Cram L’Hotel”. I’m not making these up!  One that does sound to have come out an Engrish Hotel Directory is, “The Silken Gran Hotel Havanna.” 

Meanwhile the “EXE Fira” can only have come from a desperate attempt to use all seven tiles from a very bad hand of Scrabble. The “Fexeira” might have been a better use of the same letters, but what do I know?

“The GBB Hotel 4 Barcelona” on the other hand sounds like nothing less than a major branding error. No matter how good the place might be, I really can’t imagine anyone saying, “When I’m in Barcelona I always stay at the GBB Hotel 4.”

But for just plain bizarre, the overall winner is “The HLG City Park Nicaragua Hotel Barcelona”.  HLG City Park is bad enough, but how the heck did Nicaragua get into the act?

You know what? Yotel really isn’t that bad at all. In fact in a city where the locals’ preferred form of greeting is “Yo!” it’s downright brilliant.

Eurail April Fools’ Joke Sends Travel Journalists to the Dogs – But They May be on to Something

On April 1^st Eurail announced that they would be offering “People and Pet Packages” that combined First Class rail service between Europe’s most beautiful cities for travelers and their pets with scheduled stops at “Pet Spas” that were guaranteed to revive and refresh the tired canine/feline companions.  The rationale?  According to the release: “Recent studies show that pet owners are less likely to take long trips than those with no animals to care for. The stress of finding appropriate pet care seems to outweigh their desire to travel, experts say.”

Haha, it was all a joke.  But was it?  This actually seems to make a lot of sense to me.  I’m not a pet owner but can imagine some of my friends with a house full of furry dependents really not being able to take a quick jump over the pond because of the hassles involved in pet-care.  Has this joke unearthed an important and underserved demographic in the industry?

Let’s look at Luxury Hotels.  Over the last several years there has been an overlap between Green initiatives and Pet-friendly ones at many properties.  According to a Starwood poll, and this isn’t a joke, of the 62 million dog owners in the US an astounding 78% consider the dog to be an “equal” part of the family.  If this is true than it would make sense for the hotels to make allowances for the non-speaking, hairy but none-the-less equal visitors to be accommodated and maybe even catered to as well.  There are child programs all over, why not pets?

Under the Sheraton LTD program (short for Love That Dog) all visiting canines get special tags with the hotel’s address, special food and drink bowls and designer beds.  This includes all W Hotels, Westin and Sheraton properties.

The Hotel Monaco takes it a step (literally) further with scheduled one hour walks every day and “delicious and earth-friendly treats.”  Like, I don’t know, a stick?  In San Francisco the dogs can also watch movies in a special room including, yup, Dr. Doolittle and Lassie.

As might be expected the Four Seasons quietly and non-discriminately accepts pets under 15 pounds as a matter of course.  Considering the number of visitors with a small, living accessory hanging out of their LV or Prada handbag this would seem to be necessary, especially in New York and Los Angeles.

Accessory or equal member of the family, regardless it seems like Euro-vacations with Pet Spas built in is actually a great idea.  I know some people that would be getting them for Christmas next year.

The Summer Olympics are More than a Year Away… Hotel Price-Gouging is Already Upon Us

The countdown to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London has begun and already reports are coming in of room prices being inflated to such an appalling extent that you have to wonder if there is some rational reason (besides outright greed) involved in the decision-making.  Are the Olympics (and other international sporting events such as the World Cup) such tried and true money-makers that businesses can charge absolutely anything that they want, people will come (and pay) in droves and when the dust clears every happily drives away in a new Bentley?

No, actually.  Not at all.  Historically, hosting the Olympics has been a losing venture for the destination city and recently it has become somewhat of a losing proposition for the local businesses, including hotels, as well.  Forget about international camaraderie, cross-cultural good-will and the thrill of sport for a minute and let’s just look at the economics.  Until the Los Angeles games of 1984, hosting the Olympics wasn’t a profitable venture at all, it was done as a symbol of pride.  In 1976 Montreal walked away from their tenure as hosts $2.7 billion in debt, and this was after then-mayor Jean Drapeau boasted confidently that “the Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.”  

Some slick-dealing in LA managed to pull a profit of $250 million and for some of the subsequent Olympic Games there was profit of between $5 – $10 million for the host cities.  Salt Lake City finished up $155 billion in debt.  Athens about $15 billion.  BILLION!

What about hotels?  Modern large-scale price gouging for visitors to the games really started in Atlanta in 1996 and during the period of the Olympics occupancy rates fell from 73% to 68%.  Ok, but maybe that was a glitch. What about Beijing!  Beijing is the symbol of the modern Olympics! (Except, of course, for all the human rights violation stuff.) During the two year lead up to the Beijing Olympic Games an additional 144,000 hotel rooms were constructed across multiple price points to accommodate the expected hordes of visitors and prices were set three to eight times higher than normal for the summer period.  That means that a crappy 2 star hotel that normally cost under $100/night was charging more than $300.  By May (the Olympics were in August) occupancy rates were at about 44% for four star hotels and 77% for the five star properties.  Where were the visitors willing to pay anything?

I’ll tell you where they were: at home.  The majority of die-hard sports fans would make huge sacrifices to be able to witness the Olympics but when the daily cost of attendance for room alone is eight times higher than normal maybe it would be easier to stay home and watch the games at a bar.  Remember, the only people who really NEED to be at the games are the athletes, and they’re not paying for hotels at all.

London would do well to heed history rather than decide that greed is the name of the game.  When four star hotels are charging GBP 1100/night international visitors can expect that it will just be too expensive to attend the games.  In a stroke of collaborative genius the Government tourism agency Visit Britain is asking hoteliers to sign a fair pricing agreement for the Olympics. You think?  Maybe it’s time to make the Olympics about international cooperation once again and not let some ravenous hotels poison the well for everyone.

Does civil unrest mean loss of tourism development? Not in the Middle East.

What does turmoil and civil unrest in the Middle East mean for tourism development in the region? I’m the first to admit that this may sound like a ridiculous question with a very easy answer, at least in the short term, but the answer may not be so obvious.  Given the relentless video footage of the protests, demonstrations and riots not only in Egypt but also in Tunisia, Bahrain, Iran, Yemen and Libya it would seem that for the time being the entire region would be on hold, at least in terms of visiting tourists and the development of new hotels and resorts.  Although it’s the UAE, and Dubai in particular that gets the most attention (and financing), the entire Middle East is experiencing an incredible surge in property investment and as a whole the region reported 11% increases REV/PAR and a 6% rise in occupancy during January.

A huge range of international luxury brands continue to expand through the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon and develop new properties.  Not just business hotels but huge resorts aimed at visiting tourists.  The first Waldorf Astoria in the region is scheduled for Ras al Kaimah in the UAE, Missoni is opening its second Kuwait property and Kempinski has eight hotels slated for the next couple of years in destinations including Muscat, Beirut and Damascus.

I’d like to think that the reason that all of the undiminished development in the region is continuing to take place also goes for the changing of the political juntas:  new leadership will result in more political stability than has been seen throughout the Middle East than at any point in recent history.  More stability means more tourist and development dollars. 

Even given all of the very publicized and very serious attacks directly targeting foreign nationals over the past twenty years throughout the Middle East, tourists have relentlessly continued to visit Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and even Libya.  Visitors bring business and spend money.  Lots of money.  Between 2004 and 2010 tourism revenues in Egypt rose 55% and tourism now accounts for more than 6% of the country’s annual GDP.   The mystical draw of the pyramids appears to create very short memory spans in travelers who want to visit Egypt but at some point, without a sense of safety and security, tourists will stop visiting, pyramids or no pyramids.   

By many estimates more Egyptians are employed by tourism than any other industry and the revolutions are, more than anything else, about jobs.  Will the Egyptians and Libyans and Tunisians elect governments that allows tourism, and the related jobs, to continue to grow or won't they?  For every additional million tourists that visit Egypt 200,000 new jobs are created and growth rates have increased by close to 2 million visitors annually for the last several years. Can a fundamentalist government and Sharia law create a welcoming atmosphere for visitors?  I sincerely doubt it, and I bet that most of the top luxury hotel brands would agree with me.

For Hotels, Small is the New Black

Recently I talked about the growing trend of Micro-hotels, specifically the soon-to-arrive launch of the Yotel brand in New York.  Yotel founder Simon Woodrofe has been very vocal about finding his inspiration from the Japanese Capsule Hotels (micro-micro hotels) and then trying to combine the idea with the look, feel and amenities of a first class seat on an international flight.  It works, there’s no doubt about it, but for the NYC property the room layout is decidedly similar to that of the city’s boutique properties, both in size and vibe.  So is describing the hotel as intentionally small a brilliant marketing ploy since the last thing any self-respecting “boutique” or “design” hotel would advertise is the lack of space in the rooms?

 I think it is.  I also think it’s closely linked to the growing trend in America towards a more compact and self-aware way of living: the huge backlash from SUV-ness in this country has led to countless people trading in their Hummer for a Mini and the new Fiat, the quintessential little Euro-car, is poised to break records when it becomes fully available to US consumers in a couple of months.

Why not hotels?  Why shouldn’t we have the choice of a small but stylish room at a beautiful luxury hotel if we want one?  Why isn’t there another size option below standard? 

As long as they don’t make the rooms too small, as in the recently closed Capsule Hotel in Shanghai that failed every safety test that the (notoriously lax) Chinese safety inspectors through at it.  It does seem to make sense that in case of an emergency getting out of a space three and a half feet tall and seven feet long would be sort of difficult.

There’s a growing number of hotels in cities all over the world that are truly tiny (without being a capsule); in New York the Jane Hotel has ship cabin-like rooms at 50 square feet ($90/night) and the hip Hotel 41 has rooms double that size (100 square feet) for just over $200/night.  I, for one, think it’s great.  Bring on the micros, just forget about the stacked capsule hotels that resemble a futuristic military experiment and focus on rooms with a bed, and ideally a window.  Maybe even a nightstand and closet. How many square feet is that?

Wi-Fi and TP

What do hotel Wi-Fi charges and toilet paper have in common?

Here’s a clue: Next time you’re in a supermarket, compare the size of a standard roll of toilet paper with that of the plumper, more expensive “premium” roll next to it.

If the premium version is how you remember all toilet rolls used to look and the standard one seems kind of skinny by comparison, then you see where I am going. The manufacturers reduced the size (but not the price) of the “standard” product so they could charge a premium for the re-designated “family-sized” or “economy” rolls that until recently were the standard.

Amazingly, many hotel groups seem to be using exactly the same, highly flawed, playbook with their Wi-Fi pricing policies.

This week I spent a couple of nights in major chain property in Providence, Rhode Island. I’ve stayed there before, and for a recently renovated, four-star hotel the $139 rate which included valet parking (and toilet paper) seemed like a good deal. And it was, but for the latest irritating “nickel and dime” routine.

As it was a year ago, the hotel’s lobby and restaurant areas had free Internet access, but to connect in your room there was a charge of $10 per day. This time around however there was a subtle difference. Like the re-sized TP rolls, there was now a two-tier scale of charges for Internet access in the rooms. The previously all-inclusive $10 standard was now thinned down to a low-bandwidth “basic” service, which gets you e-mail and Facebook but very little else.

For the plumper roll, with faster higher bandwidth that would “facilitate the downloading of large files” as well as access to movies, You Tube etc. the daily rate was $14.99 - but as a special bonus it did include those invaluable “free” local phone-calls!

When are hotel marketing departments going to learn to move with the times and pander to their customers instead of trying to wring every last cent out of them while the going is not so good?

When you can find free “Wi-Fi Hot Spots” in just about every bookstore, Starbucks, and even the hotel’s own public areas - heck, when even airports are offering free Internet access – surely the writing is chiseled into the wall that the days of charging for it are over!

Edmonds, Washington-based hotel technology consultant Jon Inge says that “offering two-tier Wi-Fi to more and more guests means it’s only a matter of time until they offer free low-level access to everyone.” And not much longer, I suspect, until it is a standard inclusion at all levels of access.

Many years ago when a snowstorm had unexpectedly shut down the Northeast, and there was no room at the (Holiday) inn, I was forced to spend a night in a Bates-like motel near Miami airport. I think it had a name like “The Airways Inn.” At check-in not only did I have to pay for the room up-front, but I was obliged to hand over a refundable deposit of $20 for two threadbare towels. The toilet paper was included.

The next time I checked in to a hotel, I recall chuckling to myself that they didn’t advertize the fact that towels were included in the rate. It’s time today’s innkeepers figured out that they maybe have another two years at most to gain a slight edge on their competition by promoting “Free Wi-Fi”. After that it’s going to be like the towels, an expected standard inclusion in their room rates. As for my views on the same hotel’s $14.99 price tag for watching “The Social Network” in my room? I’ll save those for another day!

Stay True to Your New Year’s Resolutions with the 2011 Tattler Spa Guide

Ringing in the New Year brings with it some time-honored traditions: champagne, a kiss at midnight (if you’re lucky), the singing of Auld Lang Syne and, of course, the dreaded New Year’s Resolution.  For many people resolutions focus on taking better care of oneself (I personally always vow to start taking the lottery much more seriously) and weight loss and personal fitness always seem to top the list.  Come February many resolutions are abandoned as impractical, too time-consuming, or, as in the case of a very clever friend of mine, too self-obsessed (she just didn’t want to have to keep going to her personal trainer).  What if there was a way to keep your resolution without all the pain and suffering?  If you’ve vowed to take better care of yourself then you need to take a look at the 2011 Tattler Spa Guide…a cheeky and extremely well-researched guide to all of the world’s best spas from the famous Tattler team.

Rather than bore you with pedestrian categories like Alpine, Beachfront, or even Therapeutic, the ladies at Tattler prefer category names such as Drastic Detox, Soul Soothers, and Lithe Spirit.  The entire guide lists 101 spas in every corner of the world, from the sun-drenched shores of Thailand at the Six Senses Hideaway to the busy streets of Mumbai at the Oberoi.  For a quick California dash you can visit the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa or for join me as I head to the French Riviera for a long weekend at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, halfway between Nice and Monaco.

Next year my New Year’s Resolution is going to be to find luxurious and expensive ways to circumvent working for my resolutions.  That and taking the lottery much more seriously.

Check out the entire list here and tell the girls I said Hi.

Yotel is set to bring the micro-pod hotel to NYC, but the concept seems strangely familiar

 In the world of luxury and boutique lodging a micro-hotel usually means a beautiful building with only a couple of rooms.  Something like the 14 room, Ferragamo-owned Portrait Suites in Rome, the 24 room Soho House in New York or the beautiful One Hotel in Siem Reap that has, you guessed it, just one suite.  European brand Yotel is coming to New York City and they have a very different concept of the micro-hotel…but is it anything we haven’t already seen?

With airport Yotels at Heathrow and Gatwick in London and Amsterdam Schiphol operating at 200% occupancy, the brand is poised to take over a city near you.  How is it possible to operate at 200%, you may ask?  The average booking at an airport Yotel is 4 hours, so in theory they’re booking each room twice a day.  This is actually pretty deceiving since a normal hotel offers rooms for approximately 20 hours between check-in and check out so Yotel is actually, according to their own numbers, operating at 200% out of a possible 500% occupancy (so really less than 50%).  But I digress for the sake of chaos math.  The bottom line is that Yotel is doing very well and why not?  As pointed out in previous blogs the more time we’re forced to spend at the airport the more amenities and options we should have.  The Yotel rooms are based on a sleeper First Class seat and although slightly larger and with a private bathroom, the image should give a fair impression of the amount of space available to guests.  It seems like they would be most useful for a middle of the night connection or pre-meeting power nap.  I guess they also give incredible new possibilities to flight-delay-induced airport bar trysts.

It can be assumed that the Yotel New York will not be pushing hourly rates, since we actually call those “hotels” bordellos, especially in Midtown.  The big question that everyone seems to be asking is will (non-pod-loving Japanese) tourists be OK with the tiny rooms?  Originally the location, which is on 42^nd Street, was slated for 300 rooms but Yotel managed to squeeze 670 into the same space.  Should we be shocked and outraged?  Impressed?  How do they compare to our favorite boutique and design hotels in Midtown?

The birth of the boutique hotel movement started about 15 blocks north of the Yotel at the Hudson, launched by the Morgans Hotel Group in 1984.  Boutique Hotels have brought us many things over the years: artistically-placed bamboo, black walls, silly slogans, beautifully vapid employees…the list goes on and on.  Another thing they brought us was a drastic reduction in room size. We accepted the suddenly shrunken rooms as a matter of artistic integrity and quietly folded ourselves into the single beds without complaint.  Is Yotel doing anything differently?  The Yotel rooms are slated to be 161 square feet with windows in each room.  At the Hudson the standard queen rooms are 144-167 square feet and there is no window guarantee.  Very Interesting.  How much are these rooms?  Right now they’re on special for $169.  And the Yotel…$250.  So the Yotel is a standard NYC boutique hotel disguising itself as a micro-pod hotel?

I don’t see what’s so different and new about this idea.  Maybe they’ll skip the bamboo, black walls and vapid employees, although I doubt it.

A Glimpse of Future Vegas: Posh Lakefront Resorts far from the Storied Strip

Las Vegas always seems to be growing and changing; reinventing itself on an almost constant basis since first being “discovered” in 1829 by a young Spanish scout named Rafael Rivera.  From sleepy backwater town to booming entertainment capital of the world only took about 30 years as a Howard Hughes’ led corporate development strategy created the original foundation of hotels and casinos lining the strip that epitomizes all that is modern Las Vegas. 

The 80’s and 90’s brought unprecedented growth and decadence and then it all seemed to reach a status quo (admittedly an incredibly lofty status quo) until Steve Winn started the largest and most ambitious building boom the city has ever seen in 2005. Even after the go-go 90’s and the construction of such hotel icons as the Golden Nugget, The Mirage, Treasure Island, the Bellagio, the Wynn, and Encore, this newest phase is even bigger and so far includes more than 80 high-rise, condo, hotel and mixed-use buildings in the greater Las Vegas area. This is interesting for two important reasons: 1. The biggest developers in Vegas are focusing on non-casino properties, and two: they’re focusing on areas spread throughout the greater Las Vegas area, as in waaay outside the normal boundaries of the Strip.

A couple of days ago the Dolce Hotel Group opened the Ravella at Lake Las Vegas, a sprawling 39,000 square foot lakeside resort inspired by and aspiring to be a beautiful Italian Villa on Lake Como.  You know what it doesn’t have?  A casino.  You know where it isn’t located?  The Strip…in fact, it’s more than 17 miles away.  OK, so 17 miles isn’t the end of the world but there are plenty of strip-side hotels (the Bellagio, the Venetian, anything by Wynn) that are luxurious enough that you feel miles and miles away from the insanity outside the hotel’s front doors.  So who really wants to go and hang out, even (man-made lakeside) in the middle of the Nevada Desert?

The entire development of Lake Las Vegas has been plagued almost from the begining and the Dolce property was the Ritz Carlton until it declared bankruptcy in 2008.  Envisioning a picturesque lake ringed by private villas and luxury resorts, developer Ron Boedekker convinced enough brands, including RC, that the idea was a sure-thing that development around the lake began in earnest and then everyone seemed lose their shirts just a few short years later.  Contrary to being a bad idea, I think that the reopening of the property under the Dolce banner is a great thing; although more for locals than for tourists.

Imagine you live in downtown Las Vegas or one of the small suburbs that surrounds it and you work in any of the million professions that support tourism and gaming and entertainment.  Do you want to escape for a minute and go to…the Strip?  No, you want to go to Lake Como, or at least Lake Las Vegas, and swim and hang out on the beach and spend some of your hard-earned money eating and drinking and relaxing.  Not only has the Ravello drastically reduced pricing from the Ritz-Carlton days to a starting point of under $120/night but locals with a Nevada ID get 25% off.  Not bad.

As Las Vegas continues to grow and reinvent itself it has nowhere to go but out.  What was once inhospitable desert may soon be a “Lakes Region” offering close proximity to the Strip, sort of, and all of the entertainment and luxury amenities that the city has become famous for.  If there’s one thing that the city has repeatedly proven it’s anything is possible with a little imagination and a whole lot of money.

Luxury Seychelles beach retreat offers the perfect low-key Valentine’s Day present

It ‘s that time of year again; the time when every television commercial and radio spot reminds you and your significant other that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner.  This incredible marketing ploy seems to start earlier and earlier every year, sort of like your neighbors who put up awful Christmas decorations on Thanksgiving, and I for one have always felt nothing but dread when the ads and not-so-gentle reminders start.  That is, I’ve always felt dread until this year.  This year I’ve finally found the low-key and understated gift that truly represents my feelings and comes directly from the wallet, I mean heart: a $5 million cake designed by the culinary team at Fregate Island Resort, a 5+ star eco-escape in the Seychelles.  I was thinking that a trip to the Seychelles would be a great V-day gift but then I thought, nah, too pedestrian.  I wish there was a diamond encrusted cake or something to go along with the $2200/night lodging just to stand out a bit, and then Voila!   The perfect gift at a price that can’t be beat.

The cake, made with the assistance of South Africa Diamonds, is actually a chocolate tart covered in 929 diamonds, totaling 151.92 carats - including seven individual stones of between 5.05 and 9.04 carats and one worth over a $1 million. It’s funny, I didn’t know that you could eat diamonds. Do they taste like chocolate or vanilla?

The (cup)cake comes with first class air to the island on Emirates and 7 nights of full board accommodation on Fregate Island. I would highly suggest that you hurry, though, because with only 16 villas on the entire island and a deal that includes flights, lodging and a small cake for the incredible price of $5,310,000 you can guarantee that availability will be gone before you can say “who the bleep needs a $5 million diamond-encrusted cake?”

Ah, it’s nice to live in the post-consumption/post-recession years.  Remember how vulgar everyone used to be when we spent all of our money on foolish and trivial things with no thought of the ramifications?

Happy Valentine's Day