Hotels find cunning new ways to push up charges

Hotels are inventing new ways of charging guests for services that have hitherto been provided free. In the US, they have taken to charging for re-stocking mini-bars. A guest pays for the item consumed and then an additional fee to compensate the hotel for having to re-stock the item in the room fridge.
In the past, hotels charged hefty fees to make phone-calls. Many still do – but guests just use their mobiles instead. Other guests use their laptops or smart-phones, in conjunction with Skype, calling anywhere in the world at little or no cost. A few business travellers even use their laptops to watch movies, depriving hotels of another lucrative source of revenue. Savvy travellers know never to touch the mini-bar, preferring to buy drinks at the supermarket across the road.
Seeking extra revenue, some hotels have taken to charging guests monstrous fees for using internet. Charges as high a US$25 a day are being levied. Guests are aware that they can obtain internet for a fraction of the price outside the hotel, but may still fork out for convenience sake, particularly if their employers or their companies are paying. Extortionate internet charges work against hotels in the long run, however. Guests remember those progressive properties that offer them free internet – and they return. In Taiwan, five-star properties often supply free internet. Guests don’t forget it.
Hotel managers and operators face a dilemma. If they increase the hotel rack rate, they place themselves at a commercial disadvantage when rates are listed by price online by sites such as TripAdvisor and Wotif. If instead they become inventive and start tweaking incidental charges to increase overall take, guests may consider the charges a sneaky ripoff and not return.
A report in the Los Angeles Times notes that some US hotels now charge for holding baggage for a few hours after guests check out. Even room service trays are showing up on bills as chargeable items.
Extra charges at hotels are nothing new. The hospitality industry routinely charges guests for parking and other extras. In the US, however, cash-hungry hotel operators are emulating the revenue-generating tactics of the airline industry.
The LA Times quoted Bjorn Hanson, a hospitality expert and an associate professor at New York University, as saying that “restocking fees” for mini-bars could be as much as US$5.95 at some establishments for a can of soda that costs US$2.50.
Other imaginative fees, Hanson said, included a “room service fee” (on top of the charge for the room service meal) and even a US$2 fee to pay for lost or damaged room service trays. American hotels are obsessed with tipping and some are now starting to calculate the gratuity and include it on the bill. Then there’s that fee for holding bags after check-out.
Hanson estimates that the US lodging and hospitality industry collected about US$1.55 billion in such fees during 2009 – up from about US$1 billion in 2003.
Written by: Peter  Needham