Hi EC -
All the airports we fly into except our home base, does not have GPU facilities. We operate in West Africa where such an item is a luxury. As for pax comfort, luckily we don't have to worry about that as all the flying is cargo hauling.
Farque - As far as I know running hotel mode does not count toward an engine cycle.
We use hotel mode quite extensively but I've never seen an engineer come close to the engine when running it in Hmode. They stay rather far away but I suppose that is mainly due to the noise that Hmode makes. It is incredibly loud.
Happy flying!