How to ensure a TB Hotel is not TB depleted?

[+Halina23]

Hi everyone!

I recently created a TB Hotel (GC9JX4T) from one of my more popular caches. I think I initially stocked it with 6 TBs which, due to its smaller size, was actually quite a lot. It didn't take long for the TBs to dwindle, as they were taken and not traded. One TB has already gone missing. I've mentioned trading the TBs on my cache page, to no avail. I can keep stocking the TBs here for a while, but at some point I'll just stop. Any advice on how I can ensure a stocked buggy hotel? Other hotels seem to keep a decent roster of TBs in them.

Thank you all for your thoughts!

[geoawareUSA9]

You can't require that people leave TBs when taking them. You can ask, and that's about it.

 

Others often keep their inventory because the owner keeps getting TBs from elsewhere and depositing them.

 

We try to trade evenly, if not leave more than we took, because we like trading TBs, but some people like just moving TBs along, and that's OK, too.

Edited June 29, 2022 by geoawareUSA9

[+niraD]

1 hour ago, Halina23 said:

I recently created a TB Hotel (GC9JX4T) from one of my more popular caches. I think I initially stocked it with 6 TBs which, due to its smaller size, was actually quite a lot. It didn't take long for the TBs to dwindle, as they were taken and not traded.

Great! That means that someone was able to keep them moving!

 

1 hour ago, Halina23 said:

I've mentioned trading the TBs on my cache page, to no avail.

You might consider this bookmark list: Travel Bug Prisons

 

Especially consider the description of that bookmark list: "TBs and trackable coins are NOT TRADE ITEMS. They do not belong to cache owners and cache owners have no real right to hold them hostage in in trade for others. The TB and coin owners paid for those trackables to travel, not to sit in a cache to satisfy the expectations of either the cache owner or of assorted visitors. If a cacher can advance the goal of every TB and coin in the cache, and wants to do it, that cacher would be right to take them all."

[+dprovan]

7 hours ago, Halina23 said:

I can keep stocking the TBs here for a while, but at some point I'll just stop.

So you *do* know how to keep your TB hotel from being depleted: don't stop restocking it.

 

There are ways to make it so that you need to restock it less frequently but -- hint! -- it starts by creating a cache specifically designed to be a TB hotel, not declaring that an existing cache that's not very big is a TB hotel without actually making it one. To my way of thinking, unilaterally declaring an existing popular cache is now a TB hotel when you also think TB hotels should typically have TBs in it -- I don't consider that a requirement, but it sounds like you do -- implies that *you* are going to make sure it has TBs in it, not that you expect other people to make sure it has TBs in it.

[+CAVinoGal]

16 hours ago, Halina23 said:

Hi everyone!

I recently created a TB Hotel (GC9JX4T) from one of my more popular caches. I think I initially stocked it with 6 TBs which, due to its smaller size ... I've mentioned trading the TBs on my cache page, to no avail. I can keep stocking the TBs here for a while, but at some point I'll just stop. Any advice on how I can ensure a stocked buggy hotel? <snipped>

 

As dprovan stated:
 

8 hours ago, dprovan said:

So you *do* know how to keep your TB hotel from being depleted: don't stop restocking it.

 

There are ways to make it so that you need to restock it less frequently but -- hint! -- it starts by creating a cache specifically designed to be a TB hotel, not declaring that an existing cache that's not very big is a TB hotel without actually making it one.

 

I've seen some pretty elaborate "TB Hotels" - well stocked, frequent turnover, and for some of us local to their locations, a good place to grab some travel bugs to take with us before we vacation in some place states away from home, as well as drop off those we collected on our journeys.  They are built like a "hotel", with various "rooms", space for larger bugs with attachments.

 

That being said, I looked at your cache page, and from the most recent logs it seems it's "working" as a bug hotel; folks are swapping, dropping off, taking and moving bugs frequently.  Bugs DO go missing, no matter how good the hotel is.  An ammo can with a dedicated container inside for TB's is an OK plan and seems to be working as you  intended.  And it's been in play as a TB hotel for less than month!  In my (limited) experience, TB hotels near highways that get a lot of traffic have inventories that are not very accurate due to folks traveling, not logging as timely as usual, or just forgetting where they picked up or dropped off the TB's on a road trip.  Give this some time - and you may need to be the one to restock when there's nothing there, if you want it to have travel bugs always in the inventory.

 

[+cerberus1]

21 hours ago, Halina23 said:

I recently created a TB Hotel (GC9JX4T) from one of my more popular caches.

I think I initially stocked it with 6 TBs which, due to its smaller size, was actually quite a lot. It didn't take long for the TBs to dwindle, as they were taken and not traded. One TB has already gone missing.

I've mentioned trading the TBs on my cache page, to no avail.

I can keep stocking the TBs here for a while, but at some point I'll just stop.

Any advice on how I can ensure a stocked buggy hotel? Other hotels seem to keep a decent roster of TBs in them.

Thank you all for your thoughts!

 

Are you "stocking" your "hotel" with your own or others Trackables?   

When I see Trackables in a TB prison, if I'm able I'll grab every one if not yours.  They don't belong to you. 

Trackables are meant to travel, they're not swag, so are not to be traded.

I usually send a note to the Reviewer as well.  They'll probably remind you it's an Additional Logging Requirement and not allowed.

If they're all yours, and that's what you wish, I'll just skip it.   

If you're swiping every trackable in the area just to fill your "hotel", I don't feel that's fair to others, especially those not premium members...

[+Goldenwattle]

On 6/30/2022 at 8:15 AM, Halina23 said:

Hi everyone!

I recently created a TB Hotel (GC9JX4T) from one of my more popular caches. I think I initially stocked it with 6 TBs which, due to its smaller size, was actually quite a lot. It didn't take long for the TBs to dwindle, as they were taken and not traded. One TB has already gone missing. I've mentioned trading the TBs on my cache page, to no avail. I can keep stocking the TBs here for a while, but at some point I'll just stop. Any advice on how I can ensure a stocked buggy hotel? Other hotels seem to keep a decent roster of TBs in them.

Thank you all for your thoughts!

I have a TB hotel and it's popular, because it's locked and locals know it's a safe place to leave TBs. Also it's not a plain, boring, same as any other cache, except it has TB mentioned. It's locked and furnished as a hotel, with wallpaper, carpet, artworks on the wall, a working clock (old watch) and is furnished. It really is a hotel. What is yours like?

During Covid, when people couldn't travel, my TB hotel was full to overflowing as people knew it was a safe place to put the TBs while people couldn't travel. Now people* are travelling again it has emptied out, which is correct, as TBs are meant to travel, not stay locked up. In fact I am travelling now and I took the last ones there with me. After they have travelled to the other side of the country I will leave them in another cache, likely not a TB hotel, as unless it's remote or locked, having TB hotel in the name is too much of a target for thieves.

 

* Local cachers from my city often tend to travel and turn up in all sorts of places. I'm a couple of a thousand kms from home, but who should turn up at a cache at the same time as me, but another cacher from my town. In a few days I am attending a met and greet in a remote town over 2,000 kms from home. Two other Canberra cachers have marked their intention to attend. So I go travelling to meet locals . That's why the TBS have all been removed now from my TB hotel. They are travelling as they should be.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Goldenwattle

[+barefootjeff]

29 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

I have a TB hotel and it's popular, because it's locked and locals know it's a safe place to leave TBs. Also it's not a plain, boring, same as any other cache, except it has TB mentioned. It's locked and furnished as a hotel, with wallpaper, carpet, artworks on the wall, a working clock (old watch) and is furnished. It really is a hotel. What is yours like?

During Covid, when people couldn't travel, my TB hotel was full to overflowing as people knew it was a safe place to put the TBs while people couldn't travel. Now people* are travelling again it has emptied out, which is correct, as TBs are meant to travel, not stay locked up. In fact I am travelling now and I took the last ones there with me. After they have travelled to the other side of the country I will leave them in another cache, likely not a TB hotel, as unless it's remote or locked, having TB hotel in the name is too much of a target for thieves.

 

Yep, there's one like that near here that's a large steel container with the interior done up as a hotel, including a luxury penthouse suite.

 

 

But like most caches on the Central Coast, it doesn't get many visitors now. It's only had three finders this year and currently there's only one trackable in residence.

 

1 hour ago, cerberus1 said:

When I see Trackables in a TB prison, if I'm able I'll grab every one if not yours.  They don't belong to you. 

Trackables are meant to travel, they're not swag, so are not to be traded.

 

Some of my own caches are turning into TB prisons, as I generally generally use larger containers if I can and the rare finder will sometimes drop a bunch of TBs only to have them sit there for a year or more waiting for another finder to come along. My newest multi, published in January, had three TBs left by the 2TF and the one finder since then didn't move them on, so I went out there a couple of weeks back to release them and set them travelling again. Hopefully the caches I left them in will get more visitors than my one. Just looking down my list of hides, I see there are a couple of others that have had TBs stuck in them for well over a year so I should try to get out to them and move them along sometime soon (not this weekend though as it will be bucketing down rain again).

[+Goldenwattle]

3 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Some of my own caches are turning into TB prisons

I read one log of a person who hiked to a remote cache. They said they found several trackables in it and thought they should rescue them. I think the trackables might have been 'imprisoned' there for about seven years, as no one, until this person, had visited the cache in those years. At least they still existed .

[+barefootjeff]

10 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

I read one log of a person who hiked to a remote cache. They said they found several trackables in it and thought they should rescue them. I think the trackables might have been 'imprisoned' there for about seven years, as no one, until this person, had visited the cache in those years. At least they still existed .

 

Just looking at one of mine that's not particularly remote, it's a walk of a few hundred metres along a bushland trail up a steep hill from its suburban parking waypoint. In January 2021, lee737 left a geocoin there, saying in his log on it, "Dropped off in a nice safe multi, doesn't get many visitors, but is well maintained." Doesn't get many visitors is right, he was the last one. I'd thought about moving it on last time I did a cache check, but couldn't think of anywhere locally I could drop it where it would be likely to fare any better.

[+cerberus1]

19 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

Just looking at one of mine that's not particularly remote, it's a walk of a few hundred metres along a bushland trail up a steep hill from its suburban parking waypoint. In January 2021, lee737 left a geocoin there, saying in his log on it, "Dropped off in a nice safe multi, doesn't get many visitors, but is well maintained." Doesn't get many visitors is right, he was the last one. I'd thought about moving it on last time I did a cache check, but couldn't think of anywhere locally I could drop it where it would be likely to fare any better.

 

Yeah... We see that a lot.  We figure some think that high terrain doesn't get the tons of visits of a 1.5/1.5, so it'll stay safe. That's sorta true...

 - Many of those people who enjoy those caches don't trade or bother with trackables.

For example, our 5T rural mailbox on a limb had a trackable in it for years. I told the TO it wouldn't move, even by me, and they left it anyway.

It turned up missing when a newer cacher finally Retrieved it and put it in a 1.5/1.5 to "move along".   Go figure...    

[+Goldenwattle]

3 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

It turned up missing when a newer cacher finally Retrieved it and put it in a 1.5/1.5 to "move along".   Go figure...    

I had that experience. I had left the trackable in a cache on a quiet country road, away from muggles. A newish cacher picked it up and said they would put it in a better cache, where more people could visit. The "better" cache was a very visible one of a walkway. Guess what,...no you guessed it...the trackable has never been seen since. What I disliked the most, was the unsaid assertion by these newish cachers, that they knew where to put a trackable better than a more experienced cacher. I came close to contacting them and saying, now that was clever of you, removing it from a 'safe' cache and putting it in a place where it would be stolen. I didn't, but to this day I wonder if I should have brought down their slimy, know it better statement.

[+barefootjeff]

2 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

I had that experience. I had left the trackable in a cache on a quiet country road, away from muggles. A newish cacher picked it up and said they would put it in a better cache, where more people could visit. The "better" cache was a very visible one of a walkway. Guess what,...no you guessed it...the trackable has never been seen since. What I disliked the most, was the unsaid assertion by these newish cachers, that they knew where to put a trackable better than a more experienced cacher. I came close to contacting them and saying, now that was clever of you, removing it from a 'safe' cache and putting it in a place where it would be stolen. I didn't, but to this day I wonder if I should have brought down their slimy, know it better statement.

 

It's never an easy call trying to pick a good cache to leave a trackable in. Early in my caching career, I paddled a few kilometres up Patonga Creek to attempt a cache there which had been getting fairly regular finds, so I thought it'd be a good one to drop a TB in that I'd been lugging around. The best part of a year later, though, there hadn't been any more finds and it was marooned there, so I ended up doing the paddle again to retrieve it and move it to another cache that was seeing a bit more activity. More recently, I'd been dropping trackables in a cache on Barrenjoey headland that I adopted a few years back, as that one gets a lot more visitors than any of my caches on the Central Coast, but last year someone said in their log that they'd taken the TBs I'd dropped but never logged them out and, after not getting any response from them after several messages and emails, I ended up having to mark them as missing.

 

These days, the bushland caches here rarely get any visitors and the urban ones are often targeted by here-today-gone-tomorrow never-visited-the-website phone gamers who take trackables without any idea of what they are or what they're supposed to do with them. If I come across a trackable in a cache I try to make the effort of retrieving it and moving it on but it's becoming harder and harder to find somewhere to move it to where it won't either be marooned indefinitely or disappear.

[+Goldenwattle]

10 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

It's never an easy call trying to pick a good cache to leave a trackable in. Early in my caching career, I paddled a few kilometres up Patonga Creek to attempt a cache there which had been getting fairly regular finds, so I thought it'd be a good one to drop a TB in that I'd been lugging around. The best part of a year later, though, there hadn't been any more finds and it was marooned there, so I ended up doing the paddle again to retrieve it and move it to another cache that was seeing a bit more activity. More recently, I'd been dropping trackables in a cache on Barrenjoey headland that I adopted a few years back, as that one gets a lot more visitors than any of my caches on the Central Coast, but last year someone said in their log that they'd taken the TBs I'd dropped but never logged them out and, after not getting any response from them after several messages and emails, I ended up having to mark them as missing.

 

These days, the bushland caches here rarely get any visitors and the urban ones are often targeted by here-today-gone-tomorrow never-visited-the-website phone gamers who take trackables without any idea of what they are or what they're supposed to do with them. If I come across a trackable in a cache I try to make the effort of retrieving it and moving it on but it's becoming harder and harder to find somewhere to move it to where it won't either be marooned indefinitely or disappear.

I have my own TB Hotel, which is locked. Code is given on the cache page. Local cachers are beginning to see it as a safe and easy place to leave TBs. During Covid lockdown when people weren't travelling, my hotel was packed (They had to share beds), as TBs found a home to wait out the crisis. Last time I looked it had no TBs, as people are travelling again. That makes it easy for me. If I arrive back from travelling, I will give the TBs a little tour of Canberra and visit them to a few caches, and then put them on a bed in my hotel.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Goldenwattle

[+Halina23]

On 6/30/2022 at 4:41 PM, Goldenwattle said:

I have a TB hotel and it's popular, because it's locked and locals know it's a safe place to leave TBs. Also it's not a plain, boring, same as any other cache, except it has TB mentioned. It's locked and furnished as a hotel, with wallpaper, carpet, artworks on the wall, a working clock (old watch) and is furnished. It really is a hotel. What is yours like?

During Covid, when people couldn't travel, my TB hotel was full to overflowing as people knew it was a safe place to put the TBs while people couldn't travel. Now people* are travelling again it has emptied out, which is correct, as TBs are meant to travel, not stay locked up. In fact I am travelling now and I took the last ones there with me. After they have travelled to the other side of the country I will leave them in another cache, likely not a TB hotel, as unless it's remote or locked, having TB hotel in the name is too much of a target for thieves.

 

* Local cachers from my city often tend to travel and turn up in all sorts of places. I'm a couple of a thousand kms from home, but who should turn up at a cache at the same time as me, but another cacher from my town. In a few days I am attending a met and greet in a remote town over 2,000 kms from home. Two other Canberra caches have marked their intention to attend. So I go travelling to meet locals . That's why the TBS have all been removed now from my TB hotel. They are travelling as they should be.

I love your TB Hotel! Sadly, mine is just a boring old ammo box- but still an upgrade compared to the plastic jar it was originally. I have considered making it into a dedicated TB only hotel....but that also means, like you noted, keeping it forever stocked with TBs. I don't think I collect and own enough to commit to that sort of goal. Also, more worrisome for me is the fact that several TBs have gone missing from this hotel. Ugh! It is not remote, nor locked (it is a premium cache though)- and a lock code can still be accessed by non-premium members who get a trial subscription to premium access for 7 days.