At hotels, we end up paying for a host of features we actually have no intention, or even the time, to actually use.
A hotel bedroom is very much like a buffet meal. With a buffet meal, you inevitably over-fill your plate, and then half of what you have chosen goes to waste. When I was a youngster, this was called “greed”.
Any accountant will argue with you that if you’ve wasted half your food, you’ve paid at least twice as much as you really needed to do for your meal. Similarly, at a buffet meal where it is one of those “all you can eat” offers, the proprietor will undertake a veritable host of dirty tricks to steer you towards the most profitable (technical term “cheapest to make”) foods the establishment provides (they rub their hands with glee at a Chinese restaurant if you’re a seaweed and French Fries expert!).
Likewise, with a hotel room, by the time you’ve worked out how to use the TV, logged on to the free wi-fi so you can switch on your laptop that you really have no intention of actually using, set the mood lighting, stuffed the complimentary toiletries down into the bottom of your vanity case, downloaded the smartphone app to close your curtains, found a TV channel that is actually in your native language, chosen your fruit tea and tuned-in the radio in the bathroom that the previous occupant tuned every available channel into to the one that is blaring out ‘music’ that sounds like the interior of the IKEA furniture factory, it’s either time to get suited and booted for dinner, or preferably, go to bed, worn out as you are from all the effort you’ve expended trying to operate your room.
Or, in fairness, if you are with your partner, you have to hit the shops as soon as you arrive, instead of bothering with all the TV, fruit, tea, smartphone and internet stuff. Although it is altogether very vital and life-dependent that you get onto social media and check in to boast to one and all of your whereabouts, as well as post a picture of your breakfast the following morning. And, never fear, if you are staying at a budget hotel, you can always set your location to the five-star Crowne Plaza across the road. No one will know.
The reason this all came into my tiny mind is remembering back to being feted by the Thailand Ministry for Tourism when visiting there at their invitation to check out some locations with the potential to launch a new car. I should point out that I was working for the motor manufacturer at the time and that my own car was primed and ready for its own launch onto the nearest available scrapyard heap.
They placed each of us into our own private suite at the Banyan Tree hotel in Phuket, a suite that would have made the eyes of the average, over-describing estate agent water and one that would have otherwise cost us almost £2,500 a night each had we been paying guests.
We were there for three nights, to bed at about 11 pm after a long day and then up the next morning at 7.30. So that would have worked out at £2,500 just for a night’s sleep.
I could have bought a gold-plated bed for home at that rate. Although at least I did have a dip in the room’s private jacuzzi. And I did spend some quality time working out which of the two bathrooms and their accompanying walk-in wardrobes I should use. My six shirts and four pairs of trousers looked wonderful, surrounded by over a metre of vacant hanging-space on either side of them. I couldn’t, however, work out why a room with a double bed (yes, OK, it was 2m wide) needed eight cushions with a further four in the closet!
So, do we all agree then that hotel rooms – ostensibly nothing more than a bed for the night – are, in fact, overly expensive, seeing as we end up paying for a host of features we actually have no intention, or even the time, to actually use?
As for the bedroom mini-bar.
Surely only the foolhardy would pay €5 or more for a small packet of crisps or 20cl lemonade! It’s a great shame the hotel chains haven’t worked out after all these decades that selling several items at only a 20% profit is far better than pricing themselves out of selling anything at all.
