WHILE on vacation in Barcelona with her mother last month, Laura Caddick had seen Torre Agbar lots of folk tooling around on red-and-white bicycles. But the bikes that she saw everywhere – part of the town’s bicycle-sharing program – were for use by local residents only. Torre Agbar

luckily , Ms. Caddick’s hotel, ME Barcelona, had many bicycles for guests. ‘We rode down to the beach, then to the port and up to the Ramblas, stopping for drinks and lunch along the way,’ expounded Ms. Caddick, a sportswear merchandiser from Liverpool, England. She and her mother each paid 20 euros, or $26.40 at $1.32 to the euro, to hire the bikes for four hours and felt they saw more of Barcelona than they’d had they taken the Metro from their hotel. ‘We felt we were experiencing the city from a more local point of view.’

in recent times, from Paris to Rome, new urban cycling lanes and public bike-sharing programs have been becoming more popular. And while some travelers aren’t able to hook into all the cycling opportunities – in Paris, as an example, the check-out meters for the Vlib’, a public bicycle-rental program, won’t accept most American credit cards ( they lack acrucial microchip ) – there are many hotels that offer guests use of bikes for a little fee or no charge at all .

‘It’s become a freshly discovered way for hotels to show their greenness,’ announced Jonathan Barsky, vice chairman for research at Market Metrix, which gauges customer satisfaction in hospitality companies.

The bikes, which are usually upright models, have proved to be popular, particularly among vacationing guests, though business travelers have been observed to cycle to an appointment, according to many hotels

The Hotel Gates in Berlin, which introduced a dozen red cycles last May, making them available to guests without charge, has just ordered 4 more bikes for the summer season

‘Sometimes the guests ask for a bike, and they’re all gone,’ asserted Kirsten Kurbjuhn, the general chief, adding that more than sixty % of the guests who fill out the hotel’s customer-feedback questionnaire say the bikes are’a highly valuable service,’ and 20 p.c say they are one of the reasons they selected the hotel.

Astrid Boh, a management consultant from Frankfurt who scheduled a room at the Hotel Gates for a business trip at the end of March, did not know about the bikes before her arrival. But after hearing about them at the reception desk, she was pleased she had taken a taxi from the airfield instead of renting an auto.Torre Agbar.

‘Parking is a challenge in Berlin,’ asserted Ms. Boh, who pedaled to a business meeting, shops and even out to dinner at night. ‘I liked being able to get somewhere fast and get some exercise at the same time.’

Some hotels arrange with nearby bike shops to have bikes available for guests. A day’s use of a bike is included in the Green, Greener, Berlin package at the Mvenpick Hotel Berlin, which rents the bikes from a local company. The package also includes bath salts, presumably for relaxing sore muscles after astrenuous outing.

But increasingly hotels are investing in their own fleets – and picking models that reinforce the identity of the hotel.

In August, Le Meurice, a Parisian hotel that occupies an 1835 palace across from the Tuileries, displayed 5 retro-style bikes in the blue-green shade of the oxidized copper rooftops of the town, with matching helmets and front baskets emblazoned with the hotel’s gold emblem. Yank and Brit guests in their 30’s tend to be the most avid customers, according to the hotel ; Le Meurice’s sister hotel, the square Athne, opted for zippy red bikes with panniers.

At the Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, guests can check out Scott off-road bikes – the same model that the Liverpool soccer Club, which made use of the hotel as its coaching base for the last two summers, rode to get to and from soccer practice, pedaling in their red-and-black coaching shorts and jerseys while fans lined their path.

Staff members at the ME Barcelona, part of the Sol Meli hotel chain, visited many cycle shops before settling on the silvery fold-up bikes that were introduced in Sep at the hotel, housed in a modernist tower clad in anodized aluminum.

‘We always love to be on the edge of technology,’ related Pete Zudyk, VP for brand invention and communication for Sol Meli.

naturally, some hotels have given bikes for a number of years. The Hotel Hassler in Rome has had them for twenty years, according to Vivian Barsanti, the media and marketing coordinator.

In bike-happy Copenhagen, which has special tiny traffic lights for cyclists and clearly marked cycling lanes, bicycles have for a while been the standard hotel offering.

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