Wifi has become as part of a hotel service as electricity and water and recent surveys underscore that travellers will not book a hotel if it does not offer complimentary Internet access.
When you log into the Dusit network, it urges you to refrain from downloading videos and games – which is fair enough. Customers understand that free comes with certain conditions.
So now that the wifi thing has been acknowledged as an area hotels need to change their thinking on, there just leaves three areas that, in my mind, need reinvention –the business centre, mini bar and laundry.
The business centre – dens of antiquity?
I’ve not had much occasion to go near a business centre for a long while now. They seem so dinosaur-like to me, dens of antiquity. If I want to meet, I can go to any coffee places. A cuppa and the space is free. I rarely need to print or photocopy anything.
But on a recent weekend in Singapore, an associate from Japan, staying at a hotel’s executive floor, decided to book a meeting room.
As part of his executive status, he’d have two hours free usage. Our meeting went on for four. He wanted to photocopy some documents. The bill came. S$2.50 per page or something ridiculous like that. Two hours extra time – S$60 or some such figure. The photocopying came to nearly $80.
There’s a coffee machine outside the meeting room but it’s not operational. You have to order coffee – I won’t tell you what it costs.
How can such a model be relevant in this day and age? How can you charge such insane fees for a service such as photocopying which surely should be offered free to your executive guests anyway?
Paper robbery, I thought. I understand perhaps some travellers still need these services but I think hotels need to rethink their approach to business centres. Are they profit units or service centres?
Mini bar, maxi prices
Two, the minibar – another old potato issue. Some hotels have seen the light here and offer free basic items and so if you want something more expensive, you pay for it. I think customers understand that but to be charged whatever for a can of soft drink just doesn’t fill you with happiness.
In London recently, I had to brave the cold each time to get some simple provisions – how I longed for a store in the lobby run for the convenience of customers.
Washing your dirty laundry on the road
Three, the laundry. What I am curious about is who came up with these laundry prices? Someone did 50 years ago and everybody just followed it and so that’s how it’s stayed?
I am told that among business travellers, more men than women do laundry in hotels. Women tend to wash our personal things ourselves. Men send everything in and then charge to their company account, which is why I guess no one’s ever complained about laundry bills.
I personally don’t do laundry on the road unless it’s a super long trip and even then, I figure it’s cheaper to buy new undies than wash them.
Don’t get me wrong okay. I am not advocating free up everything but I think hotels need to rethink what business they are in instead of what services they offer and what they can get away with charging for each of these services, one by one.
I look forward to the next generation of hotels for a new generation of customers.
