WHILE on holiday in Barcelona with her mother last month, Laura Caddick had seen Torre Agbar a lot of folks tooling around on red-and-white bicycles. But the bikes that she saw everywhere - part of the town’s bicycle-sharing program - were to be used by local residents only. Torre Agbar

luckily , Ms. Caddick’s hotel, ME Barcelona, had several 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,’ said Ms. Caddick, a sports wear merchandiser from Liverpool, Britain. She and her mother each paid 20 Euro dollars, or $26.40 at $1.32 to the EU Dollar, to rent the bikes for 4 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 town from a more local point of view.’

recently, from Paris to Rome, new urban cycling lanes and public bike-sharing programs have been gaining in popularity. And while some travelers arenot able to link into all the cycling opportunities - in Paris, for example, the check-out meters for the Vlib’, a public bicycle-rental program, won’t accept most Yankee credit cards ( they lack a critical microchip ) - there are many hotels that offer guests use of bikes for a little fee or no charge in any way.

‘It’s become a recently 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 favored, particularly among holidaying guests, though business travelers have been known to cycle to an appointment, according to several hostels

The Hotel Gates in Berlin, which introduced 12 red cycles last May, making them available to guests without charge, has just ordered four more bikes for the high season

‘Sometimes the guests ask for a bike, and they’re all gone,’ expounded Kirsten Kurbjuhn, the general chief, adding that more than 60 p.c of the guests who fill out the hotel’s customer-feedback test say the bikes are’a highly valuable service,’ and twenty p.c say they are one of the reasons they selected the hotel.

Astrid Boh, a management specialist 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 glad she had taken a taxi from the airport instead of hiring a car.Torre Agbar.

‘Parking is a challenge in Berlin,’ recounted 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 bicycle 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 a demanding outing.

But increasingly hostels are making an investment in their own fleets - and picking models that reinforce the identity of the hotel.

In Aug, Le Meurice, a Parisian hotel that occupies an 1835 palace across from the Tuileries, unveiled 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. Yankee and UK guests in their 30’s have a tendency to be the most avid customers, according to the hotel ; Le Meurice’s sister hotel, the plaza Athne, chose zippy red bikes with panniers.

At the Victoria-Jungfrau Grand Hotel & Spa in Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, guests can check out Scott trail bicycles - the same model that the Liverpool football Club, which used the hotel as its coaching base for the last two summers, rode to get to and from football 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 several 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 like to be on the edge of technology,’ related Pete Zudyk, vice president for brand innovation and communication for Sol Meli.

of course, some hostels have provided bikes for many years. The Hotel Hassler in Rome has had them for twenty years, according to Vivian Barsanti, the media and promoting coordinator.

In bike-happy Copenhagen, that has special miniature traffic lights for bicyclists and clearly marked cycling lanes, bicycles have for a while been a standard hotel offering.

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