Hotel Changes

The world's hotels have been watching the airline industry as it adds fees and reduces services in order to both annoy passengers and to take as much of their money as possible. It's all part of that sinister plan (a little paranoia can be enjoyable) to make our traveling as uncomfortable as we can endure. The good news is that some of the changes the hotels have instituted are probably both sensible, only a minor inconvenience and long overdue. Here are a few of the changes you may have seen at those 3 to 5 star hotels you use on your travel routes.

1) Free newspapers are increasingly not being delivered to the hotel rooms of guests. The hotels are now either eliminating them or only providing a free newspaper for those guests who want to pick up one in the hotel lobby. As much as I love and read printed newspapers each day, it makes sense in this on line reading world, one in which fewer and fewer people even glance at a newspaper. This no newspaper policy saves the hotels a little money while annoying only a few customers.

2) The hotel room safe is now a rare sight in rooms. I never used those things, but many do and miss this. Now they have to bring their valuables to the hotel lobby desk to be stored in the hotel safe. I suspect that many of those who bring valuables on their trip will skip the jaunt to the hotel lobby and leave their goodies in their rooms, where some cunning maid or other hotel employee or thief will grab the goodies for themselves.

3) Premium pay channels on the hotel TV are now increasingly not offered at hotels. This means that favorite porno channel will have to be viewed on your computer instead. No problem here. Guests have increasingly used their DVD's or computers to watch whatever video, porno or not, they have time to see while vacationing. TV, like newspapers, is a dying entity. The hotels are probably wise to eliminate the expense of this service.

4) Those rolling carts in the hotel walkways outside your room with toilet paper, soap etc. are disappearing. It seems the cost of "lost" (stolen) goodies from those carts is fairly high, and that having the hotel maids tote them in plastic bags on their cleaning rounds reduces the temptation for you to grab a handful of shampoo, toothpaste and other cosmetics that you already have stuffed in your bathroom at home.  The hotels say this is a big savings. You want  toothpaste? Bring your own or the hotel will gladly sell you what it used to offer as a complimentary service.

5) Mini bar filled with overprices snacks and drinks are gone. Hallelujah to that! Nothing was ever more annoying to me at my hotel check-out than being asked what things I consumed from the hotel mini bar or refrig. After all, that junk was both unappealing and marked-up in price so high I never, ever used any of it. To find that the guest has been charged five dollars for a small bottle of water he or she did not take is beyond frustrating. The hotels have wised up and reduced the hassle for everyone by now providing empty refrigerators that guests can stock with their own goodies.

6) The free breakfast with a room purchase is going away at some hotels. This can be a good or bad thing, as some people never used their "free breakfast" anyway. The cost was still charged in their room fee despite their shunning the food.

7 ) The hotel concierge, once a free and oft used service for guest, is now asking for a fee for each service offered. I am not sure if this means guests will not tip their concierges less or not at all. But I think using them will now be based on whether they are absolutely needed, not because they are just there. The internet will take the place of the concierge in most instances.

So some changes are for the better and some a liability to the guests.  The idea that hotels are now worried about their bottom line as much as the airlines isn't surprising. The difference is that the hotel business is a competitive one, while the airline industry is not. It is a virtual monopoly that  abuses passengers as a result. Look for hotel stays to be less pleasant and a bit more expensive. It's just what the guest doesn't need after surviving that terrorist experience about the airplane that got them to their destination site