Text 2. Have you Got a Seat on Flight 98 for Vancouver?

The taxicab came to a stop outside the bright neons of Winnipeg Airport. Its one passenger almost leaped out, tossed a couple of bills to the driver and hurried to the swing doors.

Inside the man, whose name was Spencer, glanced, at the wall clock above him, then half strode, half ran to where the departure desk of Cross-Canada Airlines stood in a corner, deserted now except for the passenger agent. As Spencer reached him the agent picked up a small microphone on the desk and began to speak: “Flight 98. Flight 98. Direct fleetliner service to Vancouver, with connections for Victoria and Honolulu, leaving immediately through gate four. All passengers for Flight 98 to gate four, please. No smoking till you are in the air."

A group of people rose from the lounge seats or detached themselves from the news-stand, and made their way thankful across the hall.

"Look," said Spencer urgently, "have you got a seat on Flight 98 for Vancouver?"

The passenger agent shook his head. "Sorry, sir. Not one. Have you checked with Reservations?"

"Didn’t have time. Came straight to the airport on the chance of cancellation. You sometimes have one, I know."

"Quite right, sir. But today all our flights are completely booked — I doubt if you’ll be able to get out of here before tomorrow afternoon."

Spencer dropped his bag to the floor. "Damn it all. I’ve got to be in Vancouver by tomorrow noon at the latest."

The passenger agent leaned across the desk. "Look, there’s a charter flight in from Toronto. They are going to Vancouver. I believe they were a few seats light when they came in. Perhaps you could grab one of those."

"That’s great," exclaimed Spencer, picking up his bag again. "Do you think there’s a chance?"

"No harm in trying."

"Thanks a lot." Spencer walked briskly over to a smaller desk behind which another agent, this time from the Maple Leaf Airlines, sat busily writing.

"I wonder, can you help me? Have you by any chance a seat left on a flight to Vancouver?"

"I’ll see. Uh-hm, just one. Flight’s leaving straight away. It’s overdue as it is."

"That’s fine. Can I have that seat, please?"

The agent reached for a ticket stub. "Name, sir?"

"George Spencer." It was entered quickly, with the flight details.

"That’s sixty-five dollars for the one-way trip, sir. Thank you; glad to be of service. Any bags, sir?"

"Only one. I’ll keep it with me."

In a moment the bag was weighted and labelled.

"Here you are then, sir. The ticket is your boarding pass. Go to gate three and ask for Flight 714. Please hurry, sir: the plane’s about to leave."

(From "Runway Zero-eight" by A.Halley)

Unit 9. STAYING AT A HOTEL

Text 1. Hotels

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging, usually on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms and air conditioning or climate control. Additional common features found in hotel rooms are a telephone, an alarm clock, a television, and Internet connectivity; snack foods and drinks may be supplied in a mini-bar, and facilities for making hot drinks. Larger hotels may provide a number of additional guest facilities such as a restaurant, a swimming pool or childcare, and have conference and social function services.

The word hotel is derived from the French hôtel (coming from hôte meaning host), which referred to a French version of a townhouse or any other building seeing frequent visitors, rather than a place offering accommodation.

Classification

The cost and quality of hotels are usually indicative of the range and type of services available. Due to the enormous increase in tourism worldwide during the last decades of the 20th century, standards, especially those of smaller establishments, have improved considerably. For the sake of greater comparability, rating systems have been introduced, with the one to five stars classification being most common and with higher star ratings indicating more luxury. Hotels are independently assessed in traditional systems and these rely heavily on the facilities provided. Some consider this disadvantageous to smaller hotels whose quality of accommodation could fall into one class but the lack of an item such as an elevator would prevent it from reaching a higher categorization. In some countries, there is an official body with standard criteria for classifying hotels, but in many others there is none. There have been attempts at unifying the classification system so that it becomes an internationally recognized and reliable standard but large differences exist in the quality of the accommodation and the food within one category of hotel, sometimes even in the same country. The American Automobile Association (AAA) and their affiliated bodies use diamonds instead of stars to express hotel and restaurant ratings levels.

Unusual hotels

Many hotels can be considered destinations in themselves, by dint of unusual features of the lodging or its immediate environment:

Cave hotels

Desert Cave Hotel in Coober Pedy, South Australia and the Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (named after the author) in Guadix, Spain, as well as several hotels in Cappadocia, Turkey, are notable for being built into natural cave formations, some with rooms underground.

Capsule hotels

Capsule hotels are a type of economical hotel that are found in Japan.