photo credit: the_toe_stubber

Over the past year I have had the opportunity to do a great deal of traveling and I am eternally grateful for it. Nearly a dozen conferences have invited me to speak and most have been generous enough to provide me a hotel room to stay at. 

Though I have no complaints about my accommodations anywhere that I have been, it has given me a strange and unique opportunity to stay at a wide variety of hotels all over the world. From inexpensive chain hotels to b&bs to several very high-end establishments, I’ve probably stayed in them all within the past 12 months.

In this time, I’ve noticed something very unusual. There seems to be something of a paradox in the world of hotels. The nicer a hotel is, the less you actually get for your stay. Where there are some products where price paid has no effect on the quality of service, hotels seem to have taken the whole “You get what you pay for” cliche and turned it around, ensuring that you always pay for what you don’t get. 

It’s a frustrating kludge that has me wondering if, as customers, if we have gotten the whole idea of what makes a good hotel completely wrong and, rather than an abstract star system, its time we actually rate hotels based upon whether they actually provide what we need. 

I know it’s a radical idea, but I think it may be one whose time has come.

How We Use Hotels

When we travel somewhere far from home and we don’t have friends or family to stay with, most people stay at a hotel. The problem is that, when you travel somewhere else, you probably have a reason for traveling, be it business or pleasure, and the hotel is just a means of having a roof over your head so you aren’t sleeping in your car or in a public park.

This means that, for most of us, if you are spending a lot of time in a hotel room, you’re doing something wrong. Basically, it’s a place to sleep, go to the bathroom and rest between doing other, more important things.

If you’re on vacation, you’d rather be out sight-seeing, playing mini-golf or wind surfing. If you’re at a conference, you’d be better off mingling and rubbing elbows. Time in a hotel room is time wasted. Period.

But, for this rather limited service, many of us pay a huge premium. Hotels vary wildly in price, even in the same region, based upon the amount of “luxury” it is assumed they provide. But how much luxury does one need? If the bed is comfortable and the TV works, most people will be reasonably happy since they’ll spend most of their time being somewhere else.

Yet, there are a few things we’d like to do in a hotel, especially business travelers. It is a place to park our car, check our email and do the stuff that we would do at home or office when we can’t be doing the things we’d rather be doing.

This, however, is where the high-priced hotels seem to get you. These “incidentals” are what can turn a $300 per night room into a $400 per night room. Yet, somehow, most $60 per night hotels seem to have all of these incidentals for free.

Let’s take a look at some of the common “gotchas” that high-priced hotels seem to thrust upon customers that their inexpensive counterparts do not.

That’ll Be $15 for Air

Take, for a moment, the following considerations:

1. Parking: You’ll almost never pay for parking at an inexpensive hotel. Granted, most are outside of city districts and have enough land for a traditional parking lot, there are no valet or overnight parking fees. You pull your car up to your room or the door to the hotel and go to sleep. Fast and free.
2. Internet Access: Inexpensive hotels almost always have free Web access. As a business traveler, this is a must for me. At higher priced hotels I’ve paid as much as $25 per night for Web access, something a Holiday Inn has never charged me for. Though there seems to be a dirty trend of some lower-priced hotels partnering with paid wifi companies, such as T-Mobile, that trend seems to be waning and most hotels have expressed great dissatisfaction with these services.
3. Phone Service: At every cheap hotel I’ve been at, local calls have been free, period. At nicer hotels it is a crap shoot. Sometimes they are, sometimes they are not. Best to stay off the phone either way as the prices aren’t likely to be clearly spelled out.
4. Pets: Like traveling with your pets? Too bad if you stay at a nice hotel, most bar pets and the few that do tack on a hefty deposit. Inexpensive hotels are far more likely to allow small pets in the room and often have specific rooms for pets.
5. Business Services: Nice hotels advertise their luxurious “business areas” but fail to mention how much they cost. If you need a few quick moments on a computer or to print out a small file, you’d better bring your credit card. Cheaper hotels I can usually get the receptionist to do quick printouts for me and use the free wifi as needed. They will also look up any information I need at no charge.

The question then becomes, “What do you get at a nice hotel for that extra $100-$200 per night?” It’s a tough one to be certain.

First, you do get a more luxurious room. Though there is no promise the room will be bigger, you get more pillows, a robe, and other amenities. For example, all hotels seem to come with a coffee maker, nicer hotels give you a better selection of coffees and teas.

Second, you are likely closer to what it is you need. Conferences tend to favor nice hotels because they are near conference destinations (or actually where the conference is being held) and they are usually within walking distance of other attractions. So they are convenient in that regard.

Finally, they do carry a better brand name. This instills confidence, albeit often misguided, in those that stay there or visit such hotels.

The question is whether or not these amenities are worth the extra cash spent and the extra paid in incidentals? In most cases, I would say no. Though I will pay a premium for a good location, I typically just make sure that the hotel has the features I need and then look for the cheapest one within reason.

It may mean I stay at a hotels with names not easily recognized, but I have never had a truly bad experience, not within the past few years, doing this kind of shopping around.

Conclusions

The simple truth is this. A hotel is a necessity. It has a role to fulfill and nothing more. We don’t pay two or three times or more for “luxury” gasoline and we should really think twice before we do it with hotels.

I’ve had great stays at all kinds of places, the only thing that has changed is the amount of money that I have paid.

On the other side of the coin, if a luxury hotel is going to charge many times its competitors a mile away, it needs to offer some services that justify it. Rather than giving us amenities we don’t need and charging us for the ones that we do, it is time for these hotels to actually service the customers that pay the bills.

Then again, I guess they figure that if you’re wealthy enough to pay three times as much for a brand, you’re wealthy enough to pay extra for Wifi.

If only that were true…

Now, I joke, I’m not actually one of those white-knuckle fliers that have seen William Shatner’s episode of The Twilight Zone too many times, but I do genuinely hate flying.

It is one of the great paradoxes of my life. I love traveling, I hate flying. If I could teleport myself and my luggage where I needed to go, I would be a world traveler in no time, no matter what the expense.

But as it is, I am stuck with flying and the headaches that comes with it. Though I know no one is particularly fond of air travel, I seem to have an especially strong aversion to it.

Why do I hate flying? Well, the reason starts even before you get to the airport.

Buying Tickets

Making any large purchase is a major pain that no one enjoys. If you aren’t made of money and can afford to simply throw away hundreds of dollars, you have to spend hours of time trying to get the best price that you can.

Unfortunately though, with buying tickets you are hopelessly screwed in that regard. When buying a ticket you usually have two questions “What is the cheapest flight?” and “When does it leave?” But with dozens of sites offering different rates and some companies offering exclusive deals it becomes obvious that you are going to have to search about a dozen different locations to find the best price.

But then comes the biggest problem. Once you’ve found the best price you have to wonder if it will always be the best. Unlike buying cars, video game consoles or cell phones, with ticket purchases you get to play the stock market as you try to buy low and… well, just buy low.

The fact that sites such as Farecast have a right to exist is a huge black eye on the entire airline industry. If it were simply a matter of “buy early because prices go up the closer you go in” it would be acceptable and easy. But no, rates rise and fall faster than a stockbroker’s pulse and you could easily wind up paying more than twice the amount of the guy sitting next to you even though you did the responsible thing and booked months ahead of time.

Once you’ve got your ticket, or are lucky enough to have someone else buy it for you, the rest of the journey isn’t much better.

At the Airport

Modern airports are the antithesis to the train stations old. Rather than being models of efficiency, they are shopping malls that planes land at from time to time.

The Newcastle, UK airport was the worst I’ve seen at this, converting the entire waiting area into an overpriced food court and forcing passengers to walk through a perfume store to get to their gates (a pity this was my last memory of an absolutely incredible city), but U.S. ones aren’t much better.

Sure, everyone needs to eat and drink when they are in an airport, but there is a fine line between offering needed amenities and turning it into a profit center. Atlanta actually has a pretty good balance, but it has other problems as an airport, namely the fact the whole place looks depressing, takes forever to walk around and my plane is always at the last gate at the end of a three-mile corridor.

The biggest problem most airports have is that there is no rhyme or reason to the layout. Even experienced travelers find themselves wondering aimlessly around airports trying to find a gate or a connection.

Airports pride themselves on being efficient people-movers but, in truth, break down to shopping malls with lost customers and too much luggage.

They’re great for exercise and wasting money, but not much else.

Security

photo credit: nedrichards

I won’t spend too many words on security since everyone already knows how asinine the bulk of the process already is. Between removing your shoes, taking off your belt, pulling out your laptop and removing all liquids, you are in danger of becoming a shoeless, pant-less, theft victim who no one wants to help because he smells bad.

Still, the group I feel the worst for are the actual agents that do the security. The have, hands down, the most thankless, mundane, monotonous, low-playing, bureaucratic and unrespected jobs in the country. Janitors have job variety, factory workers have respect and dentists get paid good. Most sane people would rather work just about anywhere else.

I can’t bring myself to be angry with them when they’re short or impatient with me because I’m not familiar with rule 36a subsection 2. In 30 minutes I’ll be on a plane somewhere else and they’ll be lucky if it is lunchtime. My hat is off to them for not losing their minds and being able to at least fake a smile from time to time.

The problem I have with security is a much higher up one. They haven’t created security, but security theater. It is designed to make people feel safe even though there is very little anyone can do to actually make you prevent danger, at least to the extent most people want.

But what is really stupid about security isn’t that you have to go through it, but that you have to go through it at almost every airport. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to go through security for a second or third time on a trip just because the hub airport was too stupid to design itself so that gate-to-gate passengers don’t have to pass through a checkpoint.

Real smooth Phoenix.

On the Plane

Finally, after everything, you’re on the plane itself and at the center of the maze of agony.

I don’t know whether it is my imagination, the fast food or a conspiracy by the airlines, but every time I get onto a plane it feels more cramped than the last. No empty spots on the plane, seats barely big enough to hold my skinny self and and aisles so narrow that they could make a fire marshal choke to death with hatred.

Airplanes are everything you hated about long car rides with your family multiplied by about 20. The space is even more crowded, the people are more annoying and the entertainment makes your parents love for the oldies station seem like good times.

But then there are all of those additional charges. These days you pay for pillows, headphones and sodas. Going back to the ticket issue, how do you know which ticket is cheapest if you don’t know what you’re doing to be charged on the plane itself and how much you’re going to use? It makes figuring out your cell phone bill seem like a joy.

Fortunately one charge has never applied to me, the checked bag one. I never pack more than I can fit in a carry on bag. It’s a rule of mine. But even that strategy has come to bite me in the ass a few times as some airplanes, despite those cool boxes to check and make sure your bag will fit, don’t have room for actual carry on luggage.

Airlines have invented something called “gate checks” where you leave your bag on the ramp and it gets shoved underneath the plane, with all of the other luggage, and then you supposedly pick it up there when you’re done.

The problem is that it never works that way. Half the time the idiots unloading the luggage just put it on the conveyor belt like everything else, forcing you through the exact headache you were hoping to avoid, and the other half of the time you stand around in the corridor, blocking foot traffic, waiting for them to put your bag up. The whole time you’re standing there, clutching your ticket like a jilted prom date hoping the nightmare will end and that you still have all of your stuff.

Great.

This has lead to a completely different rule. If I’m gone less than 3 days, I pack everything in a backpack. A single backpack. More than that, I add a carry on. If Crystal and I could go to England for a week with just one carry on bag, two backpacks and a handbag, I think I can get by.

Not that I like having to get by with so little, its just that I’d be getting by with a lot less if the airlines lost my luggage or made me leave some of it at home because I couldn’t afford it.

Conclusions

Flying is so bad that, even after you get to your destination, it is always in the back of your mind that you have to do it all again in a few days. No matter how used to traveling you are, that always puts a bit of a damper on any trip.

Granted, we Americans don’t have it as bad as some countries, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam was the worst I’ve seen in terms of layout and security, but flying is still far more of a pain than it should have to be.

For some of the problems I blame ourselves. Our obsessive quest to find cheaper tickets drove down prices and discouraged the creation a market based on quality and price. But much of it belongs to the airlines and the government.

The result is that flying is now a game. It’s one where you try to from A to B as cheaply as possible while the airlines, airports everyone in between tries to siphon off as much money.

While you expect this game when you go to buy a car or a house, here you’ve supposedly already paid for the trip before you showed up. This experience, supposedly, is what you paid for.

If only it were so easy.