Of Partners, Phantoms, & Bad Bedfellows 🪲

Does hearing the word "bedbugs," suddenly give you phantom itches? If so, you definitely don’t want to discover these tiny intruders in your hotel sheets, when holidaying in a an expensive city. Case in point: the Paris scenario last autumn.

Sadly, such pest encounters are becoming more commonplace in the hotel industry. 

Fear not, though. As expected in recent times, AI steps in as the hero of the tale. 

Spotta, a UK-based company, emerged on the scene in 2017 with a mission to tackle the bedbug epidemic. According to the grapevine at Hotel Dive, Spotta is developing tech designed to identify bedbugs lurking on hotel mattresses, putting a swift end to potential outbreaks.

This startup, which raised over $3.7 million in December, has been working with hotels across Europe. They've also forged a partnership with Comcast's MachineQ to spread their bedbug-busting tech across hotels in the US.

How it works: 

Spotta’s gadget is small - the size of a pocket-book (see image above) You place it under the mattress and the gadget’s camera uses smart tech to see if there are any bedbugs. If it finds them, it sends an email with a picture to the hoteliers so they can take care of it.

Why do we need this? 

These tiny buggers can bite-off large profits from hotel wallets. One study found that a single review mentioning bedbugs can slash the value of a hotel’s rooms by $23-$38 per night.

And it’s not like hoteliers can wait for a bad review, to fold their sleeves and get to work. Because once you reach the stage where you can see the little suckers with your eyeballs, it’s likely too late to contain an outbreak. Then the only solution would be to use harmful pesticides.

What’s next? 

The tech could even be extended outside hotel rooms. The next step is to get it to identify and control pests in restaurants and bars.

No personality? No problem. As long as you got a good credit score, you can bag a partner. At least through some dating apps. 

The trend started last year when an accountant in Boston added a screenshot of her excellent credit score to her Hinge profile and received multiple offers saying “drinks tonight?” Then other online daters followed her lead, and it became a whole thing. 

Hopping on the trend, a new US dating app launched this Valentine’s Day. Score is an app for those who can prove they have a good to excellent credit rating. Users need to have a score of over 675 to join. 

But is a high credit score an indicator of a long and stable relationship? Not necessarily of course. A spendthrift with a bunch of cards who manages them carefully could score highly. But he may have only a few thousands in his bank account really. Meanwhile, a millionaire living debt-free could have a low score.

And what about the other qualities like humour, open-mindedness, or physical health? One thing's for sure. People aren't very appreciative of this trend. 

So what’s got this trend going then? 

People dating in their 20s and 30s are painfully aware of economic instability and the oscillation between inflation and recession. For them, having financial sense is one of the important boxes on the list when finding a partner. They also know that it’s more financially viable to share expenses with a partner, than to live single.

Gone may be the days when love was enough to support an unemployed partner.

Temu has left users and news outlets in a tizzy.  

The startup ran the same ad at least 5 or 6 times during the Super Bowl broadcast. It’s like they wanted us to memorise the advertisement. 

Rumor has it that PDD Holdings, the brains behind Temu, may have tossed a whopping $42 million into the promotional bonanza, considering the reported $7 million price tag for a mere 30-second slot. And let's not forget the $10 million in giveaways promised on game day. Talk about a marketing extravaganza!

Temu is barely 2-years old, and has already exploded in e-marketplace scene with the promise of the “shop like a billionaire” experience. It seized the title of the most downloaded iPhone app in the US last year.

🏖️ Why Move To Florida - Jeff Bezos saved ~$288 million in taxes last week after selling Amazon shares worth about $4 billion. Because Florida has no capital gains taxes.   

💚 Times of Love - A cutesy history of Valentine's cards, from a lovesick 3rd century priest to a Victorian prankster’s ‘skidoo’.

🏃 Get There Faster - OpenAI is set to hit $2 billion in revenue - and really fast compared to Google or Meta. 

🏈 The Girlfriend Post - Dating a Super Bowl team player is lucrative business. Girlfriends and wives make thousands of dollars from sponsored social media posts. 

🫖 Weather For Cake - An analysis of 100 million words revealed that Brits talk about the weather, pubs, tea, and cake 3 times more often than they do salad.

🪱 It's Raining Pest - A Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit had to turn around because maggots began raining down on passengers from an overhead bin.