7 very strange travel-related jobs

Fancy getting into a bed and warming it up for someone? Staff at the The Holiday Inn in Kensington, in London, are expected to don an all-in-one sleeper suit, jump into a guest’s bed and ‘warm it up’ as part of the hotel’s five-minute ‘human bed warming’ service.

‘It’s like having a giant hot water bottle in your bed,’ says Holiday Inn spokeswoman, Jane Bednall.

Designed by famed Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the Rogner Bad Blumau in Styria, Austria is built around therapeutic springs and aims to create a ‘harmonious, sustainable total work of art.’ It also employs a hotel jester.

For 1,400 euros a month, it is the jester’s role to treat guests like royalty – by mocking them and singing funny songs about them.

It may be funny in Tom and Jerry cartoons, but being hit on the head by a falling coconut is not funny. That’s why the Ritz Carlton on the Caribbean island of St Thomas employ a Coconut Safety Engineer.

It’s a simple job, really. Shimmy up the resort’s palm trees, which tower from 20 to 60 feet high, and pick the ripened coconuts before they fall. Better still, you get to keep the coconuts and sell them at the local markets.

According to Venice’s city fathers, the biggest pests in this water bound city isn’t the pigeons, it’s the uncouth tourists who traipse around shirtless, sit down in the middle of sidewalks and munch sandwiches. Since 2008, ‘volunteer angels’ have been on patrol to put their shirts on and pack away their paninis. The major perk is the power to fine tourists who are slow to comply.

Every airport in the world has a problem with birds flying into the path of planes, damaging engines, windshields and fuselage. But at Zurich Airport things are a bit more serious than that. Surrounded by nature reserve, it’s not unusual for the odd deer or wild boar to wander into the path of a Ryanair flight touching down from Stansted.

Hence the airport employs three armed hunters to patrol the airport’s wilder areas for any winged or four-legged interlopers. They also get to keep what they kill.

A local surfer and dog owner, Teevan McManus, is employed by the Loews Coronado Bay Resort & Spa in San Diego to teach dogs belonging to guests how to surf. ‘Dogs are faster learners than humans,’ he says. ‘Four legs versus two!’ Hang twenty, dude!

There’s nothing worse than a screw working loose on your sunglasses when your relaxing in the sun. That’s why the Four Seasons Resort at Manele Bay, in Hawaii employ a person solely to clean lenses, tighten screws and otherwise ensure guests’ eye-wear crises are resolved.