Small fans for hot hotel rooms?

Some of the rooms I have had on Rick Steves tours had fans provided. Sometimes you can ask at the hotel desk for a fan if there is not one in the room. On none of the tours I've been on has anyone brought a fan with them. If you are going to get an electric fan, I would try to purchase one there so it's the right voltage.

If you are thinking about a particular tour, perhaps others have experience regarding fans.

The small fans mentioned are for personal use, hold them up to you face for illusion of coolness. Useless as a room cooler and for personal use too. I find the good old folded paper fan works as better and is a nice souvenir but that is not what you are asking about.

Either I have been lucky with a/c but never had any real problem with hot rooms. I find keeping drapes/shutters closed against the sun helps and I don't open them until the sun and temps have dropped.

I use this USB/battery powered clip on fan:

http://tinyurl.com/y9fb2eby

Works great and is very light (lighter than a paperback book).

We went on a tour of China and I had read many many TripAdvisor reviews that our hotel in Beijing had super hot rooms and windows that didn't really open. I bought tiny battery-powered fans from Amazon. We used them on the nightstands and they did help. It was hot and stuffy in the room, as expected, and the air on my face helped.

One of the last things in the world that I would drag along on a trip is a portable, no matter how small, fan. If you need a fan - we never have - the hotel will provide it.

In my experience, hotels do not always have enough fans to provide one for every room. That does not mean I would carry one with me, just that I would be prepared to survive without one if I had to. I suspect it helps a lot to arrive at the hotel earlier in the day, before all the fans have been allocated.

After suffering through a few warm rooms where the hotel did not have any fans, I now take one of these:

Mini USB Fan

It's small, very poweful and folds up. It has small rubber feet that prevent it from sliding while the fan is on. The breeze from this fan has helped me sleep.

It's available in different colors.

Thanks so much to all who replied! Hopefully we won't need one. Special thanks to Frank II who included the link to a good one if we decide, based on weather reports before we leave, that it would be nice to have.

Paula

We brought small travel fans with us last year & they really helped in the summer in some non air conditioned rooms. There were not enough fans to go around from the hotel. it saved us and my kids. We were on the BEO14 tour.