Hotels treat business travellers like mugs

April 27, 2012
The Age

Despite the leaps and bounds of science and more often because of them, life continues to hold a great many mysteries.

For example, five-star hotels spend small fortunes developing loyalty programs and marketing schemes in pursuit of that most attractive customer, the regular business traveller, and then make a point of insulting said traveller every time he or she checks in.

But the nation’s expensive inns don’t actively discriminate against the road warriors – they happily insult any and every guest who comes their way.

They don’t quite spell it out, but in between the lines of the account that’s printed on heavy paper and neatly folded into an embossed envelope upon checkout is the hotel policy that states: “Don’t be fooled by the smiling and bowing – we think you’re a mug. This hotel is run by idiots who believe all people are idiots and therefore fair game for a little pickpocketing.

“Because we and you are stupid, we think we can get away with charging you a dollar for local calls that cost us a cent, the equivalent of the airfare to the destination of any interstate phone calls and management has the funding of its own holidays in mind when charging for international connections.

“But that’s old rope. What we also enjoy is our ability to charge $25 or $30 dollars for internet connection that McDonalds and Starbucks give away for free.”

Presumably, McDonalds and Starbucks are not run by fools and most guests are not fools either: who is silly enough to use a hotel room phone anymore?

Ditto the hotel internet. The modern road warrior comes fully equipped for bypassing the internet and phone charge thievery, except that occasionally there’s a problem with the portable office – a lost mobile, a location with lousy reception, an international trip with a incompatible system, a need for a speaker phone call with better sound than a Blackberry delivers – and the check-out insult kicks in.

In that regard, most of our most expensive hotels are a little like the major department stores, running a 20th century business model in the second decade of the 21st.

You might have been able to justify the 95 cent local call when the Post Master General’s Department charged 30 cents for them and an operator was required to make the connection, but technology and the rest of the world have moved on.

Similarly, when the internet was a novelty item and clunky laptops required their own mobility support system, the ability to plug into the wall was worth something (though never as much as the hotels charged).

Now guests (perhaps the wrong word there as “guest” implies a degree of hospitality lacking in this context) are left with an insult and hotels have under-utilised infrastructure.

Of course not every hotel does it. It’s a pleasant surprise that some of the better boutique operations are now trying to welcome guests instead of leaving them with the sour taste of being ripped off and those who have to try a little harder – B&Bs and middle-order players in competitive markets – regularly make a point of offering free internet.

And it is appreciated. Eavesdropping on a group of travel agents specialising in business travel found egregious internet charges scored highly in their clients’ pet peeve lists. It was considered worse than the naff country motel practice of wrapping a ribbon of paper around the toilet seat to indicate someone had wrapped a piece of paper around the toilet seat.

At least the dopey hotels are making Telstra and Optus happy, forcing people to use their mobile solutions while perfectly good landlines remain idle, but it does remain a bit of a mystery that for all the effort put into Swiss hotel training schools and hospitality colleges, the clerk behind the desk remains trained to deliver a smile at checkout that still says: We think you’re a mug.

It would be wrong to get too het up about this though as energy must be kept for other mysteries to ponder – like why do we accept that 40-year-old accountants with identity crises (the typical Harley buyer) can tool around on a brand of motorcycle whose trademark is an offensive level of noise pollution?

Is there some averaging-out of engine noise at work here – for every Prius creeping around the burbs on tip-toe, there must be a balancing vehicle without a functioning muffler?

But there’s not time now to seek an answer for that – I have to check out of a remote hotel and pay the internet bill.
Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor

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