The Insanity of Hotel Rates: Hospitality’s Tower of Babel

June 22, 2016 | rjmcgarvey | Travel

The Insanity of Hotel Rates: Hospitality’s Tower of Babel

 

By Robert McGarvey

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Used to be, at a hotel the rate was the rate and it pretty much stayed the same for a season. Sure, weekends often were priced differently than weekdays, and maybe there were dips or rises around holidays.  But as a rule rates were static.

Then hoteliers, maybe 10 years ago, heard about the successes their airline brethren were having with yield aka revenue management where the price of a seat could and did sometimes change minute by minute.

Hoteliers, smelling profits, wanted some of that so they dove into revenue management too.  But what they have created – in many cases – is a Frankenstein’s monster, a confusing, offputting mishmash of rates.

This paragraph from a recent piece in the Irish Independent smacked me: “A double room at the Premier Inn County Hall in central London on June 28 was €75 cheaper on the hotel’s website than on Booking.com. The hotel’s website was actually €20 cheaper than the price quoted when we rang up the hotel directly.”

What’s that? Three rates for the same room?

The Indo writer continued: “When we tried to book a room for a family of four for two nights in Randles Hotel in Killarney in mid-July, on Booking.com we were only given the option of taking two rooms for a total of €887. But when we looked up the hotel’s own website, and also when we rang up, we were offered a family room for €516.”

I am now looking at a hotel in Sedona, AZ. On Booking.com the rate for two nights in late June is $880 ($440 per night).  On the hotel’s website the rate was a jaw dropping $534 per night ($1068 for two nights).  Hotwire showed the same room at $414 ($828 for two nights).

I am sure if I called the hotel I could get another rate – actually probably two once I said to the first number, “Is that the best you can do?”

Five rates for one room?

A prospective guest has every right to be frustrated and annoyed by this rate Babel.

It also is fundamentally different than what we experience with airlines. With airlines the rate changes with high velocity, but the rates – in my experience – generally don’t differ significantly from channel to channel.

With hotels, rates very much do differ from channel to channel and that puts the prospective guest in a bind: in order not to feel ripped off, he/she now has to look up rates on multiple sites including the hotel’s own and maybe even include an oldfashioned analog call into a call center too.

That’s a lot of work but when you see how much variation there can be in pricing, you feel obliged to do the work.

Why is there so much price variation? My guess is that it’s mainly a function of bad software and bad communications from platform to platform.  Rate parity clauses in many online travel agency contracts make it unlikely that there are intentional differences.  Booking.com would be miffed that Hotwired had the same room at that Sedona hotel at a better rate. So, for the record, did Expedia.

I also think that there may be a talent vacuum in revenue management, especially at independents and very small groups. Large management companies and big chains have invested in the people and software to do systematic revenue management.  That is not necessarily so at small places.

But here’s the reality: what I want is to know where is the best place to book a hotel room and, frankly, I do not want to spend 15 minutes doing what I ought to be able to do in two.  

Make me a promise: this rate is the best available rate and some chains are doing exactly that. Marriott, for instance, says that if you find a better rate it will match it and take another 25% off. In limited tests, too, Marriott in fact offered the best rate – much better than what I saw on the OTAs. For instance: A room at the Algonquin in Manhattan showed at $398 on the Autograph Collection website, but $479 at Hotels.com and $489 at Booking.com.

I know where I am looking when next I want a Marriott room.

That means hotels can do this.
They just have to want to.

If we complain loud enough about rate Babel, hoteliers will get the message.

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Do Airport Lounges Really Suck?

June 13, 2016 | rjmcgarvey | Travel

Do Airport Lounges Really Suck?

 

By Robert McGarvey

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Do airport lounges suck? That’s the assertion of Erika Ho, a writer at Map Happy and a onetime TIME reporter  Her exact words: “The lounge actually kinda sucks.”

She elaborated: “In fact, they’re so bad that once my upgrades started clearing on a regular basis (and the novelty wore off), I stopped going to the lounge entirely before my flight. It was a better use of my time to get extra shut-eye, pick up food at the grocery store for the flight or do ANYTHING except spend more time at the airport.”

She continued: “Most of the time, while snacks and basic drinks are free in a lounge, most travelers will be hard-pressed to even find some Milanos lying around these days.”

You know what? She’s right.  I am an immense fan of Amex’s Centurion Lounge and, especially when flying to/from Las Vegas, I have been known to stop in on both legs of the trip, usually for a quick lunch of Scott Conant’s still tasty food.

But often I just don’t bother with an airline lounge anymore.

If I have free passes to the United Club I’ll use them if a club is convenient to the gate.  I’ll grab a Wall Street Journal – assuming any are available and often they aren’t – and maybe a mediocre cup of coffee.  If the club is too far from the gate, nowadays I’ll pass, even with a free pass in my wallet.

I have Priority Pass via Amex and, if a lounge is convenient, I’ll sometimes use it. But it has to be convenient. And of course it is free with Priority Pass.  

Ho also made the point that – considering the better stuff is on sale inside airline lounges – why not just pop into a comfy airport wine bar or saloon and most airports now have multiple choices, some pretty good. Yes, you will pay but you would probably pay inside the airline club for decent hooch. And the bar run by bar people pretty much always is a better experience than an airline lounge.

That point is all the more valid when you are faced with paying $50 for entry to a lounge – when you can saunter into the comfy wine bar for free, especially if you buy a glass of red. Probably you would never pay $50 to get into a lounge. But I have seen people, on just about every trip nowadays, shelling out cash to get in.

I have no idea what they think they are getting for their money.

Ho, by the way, is not alone in saying lounges suck. The blogger at Flights and Frustration said exactly this: “The lounges which give me frustration more than any other are those in the mainland United States. Yes, the airport lounge clubs in the US suck.”

Not to pile on, but Vane Airport threw more gasoline on this fire.  “Airport lounges are not oases of calm, peace and reflection,” said this writer. Point taken.  Particularly at prime times – say 8:30 am or 4:30 pm – just about every seat will be taken, the lounge will be noisy, probably the WiFi will be slow, and, said Vane Airport about a personal experience, “the [lounge] was crowded, noisy and the chairs were crammed together and very uncomfortable. And the food was worse.”

The Flights and Frustration blogger, after itemizing the many failures of US lounges, sighed, “I’m not sure that I want lounge club access anymore.”

Ouch.

But I cannot disagree.

Understand, too, what’s said here applies to domestic lounges. I have been to marvelous lounges in Europe and I understand (tho I have never been inside) the ones in Asia are better still.

In the US, though, the only rational way to get in an airline lounge is free and even then it may not be worth the bother. If there’s a convenient Centurion Lounge, count me in. Otherwise,  increasingly I find myself buying a decent coffee at Starbucks, grabbing a seat at the gate, creating a WiFi hotspot on my phone, and getting to work, right at the gate.

Noisy? Sure. But so’s the club.

But my hotspot is a lot more secure than any public WiFi network including a lounge’s.

And the coffee is a lot better.

 

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