Doing the dirty work

Since the Covid pandemic, an increasing number of hotels and airports are using robot cleaners to keep their venues spick and span. But a new academic study has found it might not be making the right impression on customers.

According to research by Chi Hoang, Assistant Professor of Marketing at ESCP Business School, travellers tend to see a venue as less clean if tasks are being done by robots, which can put them off visiting. Humans are seen as a better fit for tasks that demand high levels of interpersonal interactions, while robots are seen as a better fit to deal with disgusting tasks. Poor things.

your travellers will be at their happiest if they're passing through the airport at the unearthly hour of 4am. What? We can only guess that these strangely cheery early risers are either still half asleep and don't even notice the 'smiley face' check points, or are still merrily drunk from the night before.

IT's TERMINAL

Based on the availability of shops, food and beverage options, hotels and passenger satisfaction ratings at 40 of the world's busiest airports, here are the top 10 airports for a layover, according to Betway, the online gambling company:

1 Singapore Changi

2 Incheon International

3 Hong Kong International

4 Dubai International

5 Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta

6 Dallas-Fort Worth

7 Munich

8 Chhatrapati Shivaji

9 Amsterdam Schiphol

10 Denver International

Research by Betway

At the risk of encouraging naughty behaviour, we were fascinated to learn about the latest travel buzz word, the ‘hush trip’, which is basically when crafty remote workers pretend to the boss that they're working from home, as usual, but are actually on a cheeky overseas trip. Clever hey? If you're tempted, the team at Icelandair have compared over 100 of the most prominent cities in the world on factors like quality of life, Wi-Fi speeds and happiness to uncover where's best for a 'hush trip' and reckon you're best sneaking off to Vienna, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Luxembourg or Helsinki. See you there...