Lost in the brush at home improvement stores

When changing the filter for our refrigerator water dispenser recently, I noticed the dreadful condition of the unit’s condenser coils. A dense coat of dusty fur covered the coils and was most likely the cause of a recent downturn in cooling performance.

I’m not afraid to tackle a home maintenance project, but I am afraid of permanently damaging a major appliance, so I took to the Internet to learn of proper cleaning technique.
As with most projects, success was predicated on having the proper tools. In this instance, it was the refrigerator coil brush. I became determined to procure one that evening before the fur could grow impenetrable.

Not familiar with the availability of the refrigerator coil brush, I bypassed nearby general stores and headed directly to a home improvement center, where surely such items would be a staple.

My reasoning skills and tracking instincts, so acute in other areas of life, are rendered useless in a big box store of the home improvement variety. I can’t locate anything. So I knew that with darkness drawing near, the most prudent course of action would be to seek out an associate for assistance. One was spotted immediately.

Unfortunately, she was unfamiliar with the refrigerator coil brush, both in function and proximity. A quick phone call and I was dispatched to a part of the store where the brush was not located, then directed to another part of the store where the brush could not be found. With each failed discovery, I could sense the brush growing nearer.

After a third associate registered confusion over my request, I whipped out my smartphone to offer proof of its existence. On the store’s website, the brush was listed for sale at $8.98, a price I would later learn was exorbitant.

Satisfied that I wasn’t madly pursuing some sort of home maintenance Yeti, the associate tracked the item electronically on his computer. His findings were crushing. The refrigerator coil brush had become extinct, at least in that particular store.

Waving off his offer to custom order the brush, I sped off across the street where another expansive home improvement center was located, confident that I would soon locate the elusive prey.

I briefly held hope that I could find the brush on my own and trekked deep into the thick of the appliance department. There, other refrigerator-related items were bountiful, but no brush. And no associate. Dashed!

With panic setting in, I made my way to the service desk at the front of the store. Events would soon take a disturbing turn.

I was told that the appliance associate had just sought refuge in the restroom, but I was invited to “hang out” near the appliances and await his return. This did not strike me as exemplary service. It also introduced into the customer/associate relationship a level of familiarity that felt wrong. It’s one thing to call home and be told that mom can’t talk because she’s in the shower, quite another to hear that someone will be with you as soon as they’re finished with more pressing matters, to euphemize the situation.

Yet return to the appliance department I did. They had me a bit over the barrel, what with my refrigerator coils being so frightfully soiled. After 10 minutes, however, I surrendered.
Perhaps my concern should have been with the associate and whatever difficulties he may have been enduring, but I left the store brushless and decidedly out of sorts.

Dejected, I returned home where I tried not to think of the furry coils and the hazard they might be creating.

And that’s when I spotted it. In the utility room, crouched furtively between the washing machine and the wall, barely visible, was a refrigerator coil brush. “You didn’t know we had that?” said my wife, who knows where everything is.

Gridiron Gathering

Jerry Hobbs fondly remembers his time playing football at Old Forge, cherishing those memories even today, 30 years after he graduated from high school.“I still talk to five or six of my teammates, my best friends,” Hobbs said. “We talk about when we played.”Meanwhile, the current economic climate for high schools facing budget cuts created a desire for Hobbs to think of ways to assist his old program.

The result was the formation of the Old Forge Gridiron Alumni Club, which will hold its next meeting on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the banquet room of Cafe Rinaldi on Main Street in Old Forge. It costs $25 to join the club, which is limited to those ages 21 and older that played at least one year of varsity football at Old Forge.

A couple of months ago, Hobbs and others tried to figure out what they could do to help the Blue Devils football program.“We wanted to see if there was any interest in forming a social group and benefit the high school football team,” Hobbs said. “We figured that any money we raised would go to help coach (Mike) Schuback.”Times are tight and being able to assist the program was a worthwhile endeavor for Hobbs and his friends.“We don’t have an ice machine at the fieldhouse,” Hobbs said.

“The school board cut out dry cleaning machine, the uniforms from the budget.”Hobbs was quick to point out that it is not a criticism of the board, that having been on the school board before he understands that tough decisions often have to be made. But with this group, Hobbs hopes it may be able to provide certain things that can make life easier for the players and coaches that dedicate a lot of time and effort into making Old Forge a winning football program.

So Hobbs proceeds onward, with the backing of fellow officers and a board of directors, looking for ways to impact the football program.“We’re forming a membership committee, and hope to put together an activities committee,” Hobbs said.The one thing Hobbs is looking for is the camaraderie between many generations of Old Forge football players gathering together either before or after Friday night football games, remembering old, good times, hoping what they are doing will help their beloved program.

He knows some out-of-town alumni return for Friday night football games, and envisions what the club can do if it can reach those people.“We know people get stressed out about fundraisers,” Hobbs said. “We’re just trying to help out the program.”Hobbs said that current Blue Devils baseball coach Tony DiMattia has joined, and with a large group of multi-sport athletes that have graduated from the school to draw from, there could be a time where the social club expands beyond helping out just the football program. But that is something for sometime down the road. Right now we’re concentrating on football.

There’s a bigger budget in that sport,  Hobbs said. It is the biggest sport, with a proud belief in itself instilled through decades of dedication under a variety of coaches, which will reap the first rewards of the social club.Whether it be procuring an ice machine for the fieldhouse, or ensuring the uniforms are dry cleaned, the Gridiron Alumni Club has high hopes and expectations of assisting the football program to succeed on the field, as well as to bring together generations of football players for a cause close to their hearts. More information about the program is available on the web site at www.aulaundry.com.

Kenmore washers shaking up consumers

Dawna Basha felt agitated and alone. Her family told her she was becoming obsessed about problems with her LG washing machine. "Get over it," they told her. The repairmen LG sent to her suburban Phoenix home told her she wasn't washing her clothes properly, but this didn't sound right to Basha.

"I'm 58 years old, I have four children and four grandchildren. I've done so many loads of laundry, I just know this machine's not right," she insisted. 

The machine was recalled in December 2012 but Basha said that didn't solve the problem. A repairman adjusted the machine and slapped on a sticker saying not to wash waterproof or water-resistant items in it but she said the machine still took forever to run through a cycle, smelled moldy and didn't get the clothes clean.  

Then Basha found ConsumerAffairs and learned that nearly 1,000 other consumers had posted comments and complaints about their washer extractor , a sleek model that works without the agitator that has been a fixture in washing machines for as long as anyone can remember.

The company calls this lack of an agitator "WaveForce technology" and says it "uses rapid drum movement and powerful water jets to provide a revolutionary washing and rinsing experience." It even brags about its "TrueBalance anti-vibration system" that it says reduces noise and vibration, an assertion many consumers might question.

"The first time, I thought maybe it's not level or something," Basha said. "The machine shook and gave me all kind of signals that I didn't understand." Technicians came and went, each time telling Basha her floor wasn't level, she was putting the soap in the wrong place, and so forth. "It always something we're doing wrong," she said.

This would all sound pretty familiar to "L" of Fort White, Fla., who posted to ConsumerAffairs July 9, saying she too had gotten off on the wrong foot with her new LG washer.

"I did the first load which spewed soapy water on the floor. I did subsequent small loads with no overflow. The dispensers retain clear water after cycle completed. I contacted LG to question why the water remains in the dispensers and why the overflow. I was informed that I used too much soap which caused the overflow," L said. "This is my second LG, and I am no dummy. I know how to fill the soap dispenser to the 'normal' or 'max' levels."

L said the company service rep was very familiar with the issue: "We have already sent this numerous times to the designers," L said the rep told her. This didn't make L feel any better. "What? They know about the problem, continue to produce the product using the same improper guides in the manual?" she said.

Basha said her machine has already started to rust because of the water that remains after a load of wash is done. L asked the LG rep about the stagnant water as well.

She said the rep told her: "That is normal. The dispenser dispenses by overfilling the drawer, that is why there is water remaining at the end."

"Of course!" said L. "We all want stagnant water to sit in the drawer possibly turning moldy and smelly to be dispensed into the next load of wash! I am absolutely incredulous!" Click on their website www.aulaundry.com for more information.

New audience analytics and geotargeting products

For retailers, content streaming companies, and a variety of other potential new partners, location-based data was of limited value in the past, notes Factual founder and CEO and former Applied Semantics co-founder Gil Elbaz. This is largely because the insights available from this data were restricted to where a user was located at a single moment in time. Geopulse Audience, by contrast, uses historical location data combined with machine learning algorithms predict demographic associations based on the places that users spend their time. For example, a company may wish to determine whether a users is a college student, a business traveler, a regular moviegoer, and so on, in order to better personalize their user experience and tailor advertising – thus making their services more engaging and more profitable. Previously, such demographic info was only available through social logins and a limited number of other sources.

Geopulse Proximity, is complementary geofencing technology that increases the speed and accuracy with which developers and advertisers can validate the position of mobile users with respect to any of the 65 million of global businesses and points of interest in Factual’s database. For example, a discount shopping app may want to alert consumers of relevant deals any time they’re within 2 miles of a Westfield shopping mall, just as a to-do app would want to alert its user when they’re within a certain proximity of a listed task, such as picking up the dry cleaning. By offering Geopulse Proximity as an on-premise solution, Elbaz says that Factual was able to reduce latency to nanoseconds, rather than milliseconds, and allow geofences to for the first time take the shape of any irregular polygon.

It’s a sensitive time for any company to be launching a new product service that delivers consumer insights based on user data, given the recent uprising over revelations of mass spying by US intelligence agencies and participation from major technology companies. Elbaz is well aware of this fact and points out that Factual never directly collects data from users. Rather, it is a backend service provider that processes and makes sense of data that app developers already collect from their users, with their permission and under their software terms of service. Factual then mandates that all user data is anonymized before being transferred to its servers, Elbaz says, and the company takes every measure possible to ensure that storage and sharing are handled with the utmost security and privacy concerns in mind. Further, all input data is purged every two weeks and is never commingled among its developer and advertiser partnerships.

Despite the obvious privacy and security concerns, consumers stand to benefit tremendously from these new services in terms of greater personalization of content, services, advertising, and user experience. Whether they are willing to accept this fact is another matter. Nonetheless, it appears that data sharing is an inextricable part of the future we are heading toward. Given this, it’s in our best interest as consumers that it be handled by responsible companies capable of responsibly putting this data to good use. Factual appears to be taking the right steps in both regards, but only history will judge its effectiveness.

“Mobile adoption by advertisers has long been challenged by a lack of reliable demographic and behavioral information that can be used to identify the right audience,” says MoPub founder and CEO Jim Payne. Turn Sr. Director Business Development Mark Balabanian echoes this message, saying, “Hyperlocal targeted mobile advertising performs significantly better than industry average by delivering an ad that is contextually relevant to the consumer.”Read the full story at www.aulaundry.com web.

Baird mum on gov’t position during encounter

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird did not have much to say to striking Canadian foreign service officers when he visited the Canadian consulate general Hong Kong last week.

The awkward meeting between Baird and eight members of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) was captured in a YouTube video, posted by the union on June 30.

PAFSO, which represents 1,350 non-executive-level Canadian diplomats, has been in a legal strike position since April 2 and without contract since June 2011. The union is demanding equal pay for equal work because some junior diplomats earn up to $14,000 less than colleagues doing the same work in Ottawa. The union has been participating in rotating strikes aimed at missions and sections where job action will have the strongest impact.

Baird was visiting Hong Kong at the end of June as part of his eighth trip to Asia as foreign minister.

In the video, Baird gets out of his vehicle and is greeted by eight PAFSO members holding signs reading “Same work = same pay.” After Baird comments on how hot the weather is and removes his sunglasses, a member asks him if he has a minute to talk. Baird shakes each members’ hand and then listens to the union member describe his concerns for more than three minutes.

“What we’re fighting for here is a question of equity. It’s a very simple question I think. Same work for same pay, right?” says the unidentified PAFSO member in the video. “When you take into fact that most foreign service officers’ families are one-income families … it makes for a pretty significant issue and important impact on our lives.”

As the member explained the union’s concerns in English and French, Baird listened, occasionally playing with his sunglasses. After more than three minutes of listening to the member, Baird had a short response.

“

Okay, well I’ll take that message back,

” Baird said as he shook the member’s hand. “Thank you very much. Take care.”

Baird did not make any mention of the Treasury Board’s side of the argument.

Treasury Board has said PAFSO members have been presented with a fair offer. It argues the foreign service is “a well-paid and highly sought after posting” that offers salaries that often go into six figures with “generous benefits” worth tens of thousands of dollars per officer.

Some of those perks, outlined in the Foreign Service Directives, include a reimbursement of up to 50 per cent for dry cleaning expenses, the shipment of personal vehicles and household items such as furniture to the diplomat’s posting, and a foreign service incentive allowance recognizing the challenges associated with living abroad. Treasury Board said it invests $126 million a year in said Foreign Service Directives, most of which is dedicated to PAFSO employees.

But a union spokesperson said Treasury Board’s reference to the Foreign Service Directives is irrelevant to the negotiations currently at stake, which are focused on issues of pay. More information about the program is available on the web site at aulaundry.

Coveting Not a Corner Office

Sara Uttech has not spent much of her career so far worrying about “leaning in.” Instead, she has mostly been hanging on, trying to find ways to get her career to accommodate her family life, rather than the other way around.

Ms. Uttech, like many working mothers, is a married college graduate, and her job running member communications for an agricultural association helps put her family near the middle of the nation’s income curve. And like dozens of other middle-class working mothers interviewed about their work and family lives, she finds climbing a career ladder less of a concern than finding a position that offers paid sick leave, flexible scheduling or even the opportunity to work fewer hours. The ultimate luxury for some of them, in fact (though not for Ms. Uttech), would be the option to be a stay-at-home mother.

“

I never miss a baseball game

,” said Ms. Uttech, uttering a statement that is a fantasy for millions of working mothers (and fathers) nationwide. (This attendance record is even more impressive when you realize that her children play in upward of six a week.)

Ms. Uttech wants a rewarding career, but more than that she wants a flexible one. That ranking of priorities is not necessarily the one underlying best-selling books like Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In,” which advises women to seek out leadership positions, throw themselves at their careers, find a partner who helps with child care and supports their ambition, and negotiate for raises and promotions.

Ms. Uttech has done some of those things, and plans to do more as her children (two sons, ages 8 and 10, and a 15-year-old stepdaughter) grow older. Already she has been raising her hand to travel more for trade shows and conferences; last year she made four trips.

But probably the career move she is proudest of — and the one she advocates the most — is asking her boss to let her work from home on Fridays.

“People have said to me, ‘It’s not fair that you get to work from home! I want to work from home,’ ” she said. “And I say, ‘Well, have you asked?’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, I could never do that. My boss would never go for it.’ So I say, ‘Well you should ask, and you shouldn’t hold it against me that I did.’ ”

On a recent Tuesday, which she said was broadly representative of most workdays, she rose at 5:45 a.m. and did a load of laundry dryer before everyone else awoke. Soon she was wielding the hair dryer in one hand and a son’s permission slip in the other; running to the kitchen to pack lunches and help one of her sons make dirt cups (pudding and Oreo crumble) as part of a book report presentation; and then driving the children to school at 7:15 a.m. before commencing her 40-minute commute to the office, where she arrives a little after 8.

On Sundays, she teaches at her church, and then prepares most of the meals for rest of the week, making great use of two wonders of modern cookery: the slow cooker and the freezer.

She says, repeatedly, that she doesn’t “have it all together.” She worries about her ability to pay for three children’s college educations, not to mention the Lutheran private high school she would like to send the boys to first, not to mention her retirement someday.

And she emphasizes that she gets a lot of help: from her husband, Michael, who picks the boys up from their after-school program, and spends many evenings coaching their sports teams; and from other family members, like her mother and her brother, who live nearby and help watch the children during school vacations.

New on the street

Walls have disappeared in Longwood’s newest model home, a sunny semi-detached bungalow located in the heart of Hunt Club.

“People really like open spaces,” says Darice Greene, sales manager for the mid-sized company that was launched 24 years ago by Ottawa native Guy Whissel.

The Thornhill, a two-bedroom affair with hardwood floors and a finished lower level, has been a popular design in Longwood’s portfolio. In years past, a wall divided the living and dining room from the generous kitchen and attached breakfast bar, says Greene during a recent tour of the brick bungalow.

“We decided to take down the wall, to open up the spaces. There is a cathedral ceiling in the living and dining room and now it’s also a standard feature to have a cathedral ceiling in the kitchen and breakfast area. It opens up the whole house and makes it feel very large and very bright.”

In fact, there are 1,579 square feet of living space on the main level and another 898 square feet on the lower level, including a large family room, a bedroom and bathroom. The open design appeals to buyers wanting to downsize from larger, family homes, says Greene. “Our buyers are 50 plus, who are attracted to the area because it is close to the airport, yet the homes are not on a flight path, so there are no worries about noisy jets flying overhead.”

The Neighbourhoods of Hunt Club is a compact site, sitting behind Hunt Club Road near Paul Anka Drive. “You can be downtown in a few minutes. It is very central.”

Back inside the model, the kitchen has been designed for entertaining, boasting large helpings of granite counters and cupboards. The washer and dryer is tucked off the kitchen, ensuring laundry chores are a simple affair.

A front room can be a second bedroom or a cosy den.

The master bedroom has two large corner windows, ensuring lots of sunshine, while the ensuite bathroom was rejigged for convenience. Architect Douglas Hardie dropped the corner bathtub in earlier versions of the bungalow, substituting an oversized shower with chunky glass walls and convenient cupboards for towels and bed linens.

“Nobody really used the tubs, so we did some redesigning,” says Greene.

The formula for easy living, including a low-maintenance exterior, is working: Half of the 22 bungalows have already sold. Longwood is putting the finishing touches on four inventory homes, with August occupancy, says Greene. There are five wide lots with novel designs featuring rear garages.

The remaining homes will be ready by spring.

There are four different plans, starting with the Thornhill, which is the smallest, and going up to the Meadow, the largest, with 1,787 square feet and priced at $469,900. The base price of the Thornhill is $441,900, which includes hardwood flooring in the living and dining room, ceramic in the entrance and bathrooms and granite counters.

Longwood, which is also building condos, has a history of building adult-lifestyle communities, starting with bungalows near Baseline and Merivale roads and a blend of bungalows and two-storey homes a block west of this neighbourhood site.

There are also plans to build an adult-lifestyle community in Richmond. “It is a concept people like and are looking for,” says Greene, who follows her own advice, buying a Longwood bungalow townhome seven years ago. More information about the program is available on the web site at www.aulaundry.com.

Couple’s dirty laundry does a disappearing act

 "We are extremely disappointed in the dry cleaning service we received," a reader recently wrote. "My husband and I have always taken our dry cleaning to the same company and most times we leave the stuff there for months, as we don't use our dressy clothes very often. We have never had a problem and they have never called to tell us to pick it up."

Not a good habit.

And one that sooner or later you'll likely be … taken to the cleaner.

"My husband took his suit there in June 2012 and I took my pant suit there in October 2012. Last week, I picked up my suit as I was going to wear it. I then thought I'd better pick up my husband's suit and went back the next day and was told it was not there. The woman behind the counter told me that it would have been discarded and that they would have called us after three months, and called and left messages for the next three months."

That never happened, our reader claims.

She did admit that leaving one's clothes at a dry cleaner for a year is not wise.

"I understand it is our fault that we left the items there so long. But we always have."

And, if the cleaner's policy was to discard items after six months, why was her pant suit still there after eight months?

I've heard the other side of this story before. A lady who ran a small art store told me she always forces her customers to pay in full when they drop off their art and ask it be re-matted, or reframed.

Her rationale for doing so?

"Some folks never come back to collect their property. They leave it sitting here for months. I've done what they've asked, and they have not come back to pay me."

While it seems insane that consumers wanting to have their clothes cleaned or their art work refinished decide not to collect their possessions, it obviously does happen.

The reader and her husband did not prepay for their laundry dryer and couldn't find the stub they say they were given when they dropped off the missing suit.

The owner of the dry cleaning franchise said she has a 90-day pickup policy.

"But we do keep a customer's item for up to one year," she said. "We call once a month for a few months, then on the last month we call weekly, giving them a deadline to collect their order before it's discarded. We are in business to make money, not to give customers' clothes away."

If every customer decided to drop off clothing and only pick it up when needed, the dry cleaner would require a pretty large warehouse.

You don't leave expensive jewellery at the jeweller's until your next evening out, do you?

And you don't take your car in for repairs and leave it at the garage for a year.

Whether the cleaner called or didn't isn't really relevant. They're your possessions. Pick them up.

It's common sense.

Teenage Summer

Judging by my one-word lead, you probably know that this is not Starshine. My name is Stone, and I am Ms. Roshell’s oldest son. This column will not, for a change, make fun of Christians, vegans, or any other thing my mom is not.

If that’s what you’re into, you’d best stop reading now and check back a couple of weeks when my mom will probably write a column that straddles the line between raunchy humor and uncomfortableness, as usual. This column, however, will discuss a few things my mom doesn’t talk about and will not mention vaginas or flossing. Or vagina flossing, for that matter.

You may be wondering, “Why is Starshine making her son do her work for her?” Well, I’m not sure either, but the reason I accepted her offer was because she told me the only way I could get a glimpse at a TV before 8 p.m. was to bang out a column for her. And of course, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Why do parents feel so strongly about TV-watching anyway? Whenever I ask my parents about why “screen time” is so bad, they say “because it rots your brain,” and they laugh and walk away. If teenagers want to sit on their butts and do nothing all day, don’t stop ’em! What we do every day during the school year is equivalent to an adult work day, except worse. Adults get to eat lunch wherever they want, check Facebook when the boss isn’t looking, and chat with friends all the while.

We receive minor versions of these luxuries (thanks to bros who’ll buy you lunch off-campus, smart phones hidden under your desk, and the invention of whispering), but we don’t get paid for it. Plus, after the school day is over, we have to go home and continue working on homework. So when we finally get to summer, and we wake up that first morning and have an agenda of absolutely nothing for the day, LET US DO IT.

In my opinion, summer should be one extended apology from the parents to the teenagers for all the crap they put their kids through during the rest of the year (room cleaning, studying, “family time,” etc.) They should be offering us rides downtown, encouraging us to play video games, and buying us actual Oreos — not the Trader Joe’s kind.

However, my parents allowed me only two weeks of zoning out on the couch. I feel robbed of my nothingness, in a sense. I should get an even bigger apology, because my mom is absolutely crazy (wow, I hope she doesn’t edit this). Besides the fact that she has twice forced us to clap for her when she parallel-parked in a tight spot, she thinks that biking is a perfect alternative to riding in a car and that driving her son from point A to point B is spoiling him. Whenever I take longer than 12 hours to do my laundry, it suddenly becomes public property, and I wake up to find my dripping-wet clothes in a heap on the floor outside the washing machine. If I’m not careful about guarding my “nothing,” I’ll probably end up just biking around the world and doing laundry for the rest of my teen years.

So there’s your column, Mom. See what you get for asking me to do your work for you? Now the world can hear my logical, well-thought-out views on teenagers and their free time. And look, I even got a few hours of screen time out of it! More information about the program is available on the web site at www.aulaundry.com.

Wyndham Hotels and Resorts Brand Opens First Hotel

Wyndham Hotel Group has expanded its portfolio of hotels in Latin America with the addition of the 179-room Wyndham Guayaquil in Ecuador.

The newly constructed, full-service property in Guayaquil is the fifth hotel to open under an agreement between Wyndham Hotel Group and the hotel’s ownership group, Nobis, to develop and franchise eight additional hotels in the country under Wyndham Hotel Group flags over 10 years.

Located downtown on the waterfront, the new Wyndham hotel joins newly renovated sister property Howard Johnson Hotel Guayaquil, one of four Howard Johnson hotels owned by Nobis and currently operating in Ecuador.

Wyndham Guayaquil is located steps from the historic Santa Ana Hill and just minutes from the sights and attractions at Malecon 2000, Simon Bolivar Convention Center, World Trade Center Guayaquil and Aeropueto Internacional Jose Joaquin de Olmedo.

Each of the 179 guest rooms include amenities like plush pillow top bedding, down pillows, mini-bar, floor-to-ceiling windows, bathrobe, digital safe and 43-inch flat screen satellite TV.

 Guests upgrading to a Junior Suite will also be able to enjoy an hot tub, while the Presidential Suite boasts a kitchen, dining room and living room.

Guests of this Guayaquil hotel can stay fit at the state-of-art-fitness center or relax with a swim in the heated outdoor pool, which proffers glorious views of the city from the 9th floor terrace.

 Free Wi-Fi Internet access throughout the hotel ensures productivity, while a business center, free airport shuttle service, 24-hour concierge service and same-day dry cleaning machine are convenient extras for business travelers.

The onsite Restuarante Santa Ana serves up bountiful buffets for breakfast and lunch, and a selection of local and international à la carte dishes for dinner. The Numa Bar is an ideal spot to relax with a cocktail.

This Guayaquil hotel offers four meeting rooms to accommodate from 15 to 30 people, as well as a ballroom for up to 500 people.

“The launch of our flagship brand in an emerging market like Ecuador – and in one of the country’s busiest business and travel centers – is very exciting for our company,” said Daniel del Olmo, senior vice president and managing director of Latin America for Wyndham Hotel Group. “Wyndham Guayaquil will give travelers the chance to experience our customer-focused ‘Count On Me!’ service culture and will also offer the reliable services and amenities they need during their stay. We’re honored to work with a respected partner like Nobis to help us provide travelers in the region with great experiences and quality lodging options.”