The paradox of the wifi is what always gets me - I think it’s because the fancy hotels started offering internet access first, when it was a luxury, and just have kept the billing structure because, hey, everyone expenses it anyway; whereas Motel 6 & so on added free wifi when everyone started doing it and it was expected of them.
We stayed for a couple days at a medium-end hotel during a trip to Florida and were pleasantly surprised to open our tiny refrigerator and find no little bottles whatsoever inside it; just a refrigerator for our use.
Well, it has been several years, but that is what I was taught when I worked for IHG (the hotel group that includes Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn) for a year back in 2003.
I was also told that a guest who has a “companion comfort animal” be it a dog, a lizard or a pygmy hippo HAS to be allowed to bring the animal into the hotel room with them, no matter what the specific hotel’s pet policy was, as this was also an ADA regulation.
Basically they told us that for those who are willing to invoke the ADA (for legit reasons or just because they knew it was a magic phrase to do whatever they wanted to) you bend over backwards (by geting them the mini-fridge or letting them bring the puppy into the no-pets allowed hotel room) to give them what they want.
This is what I was taught by a multi-billion dollar company that operates in over 110 countries in the world. I don’t think they would have trained us to always be so accomodating if they were not legally required to be.
ETA—Re the 110 different countries bit; I don’t think the ADA rules apply to any other country besides the USA, so you probably can’t demand that a Holiday Inn in Lisbon or Lima accept your “comfort wolverine.”
Oh I don’t doubt it. THe ADA is only applied via lawsuit and if I was a hotel owner I would also bend over backwards to stay out of the courtroom.
The ADA and its application has a lot of confusion baggage with it. It isn’t like a building code, it is a law, and as such its application and interpretation is much more subjective. As the Architect I have some liability under this law but the vast majority of it is on the shoulders of my clients. In our lawsuit society some clients take a much more narrow view of the requirements to avoid lawsuits. So I don’t doubt your experience at all. But it is not a requirement.
btw–the ADA (American’s with Disabilities Act) is only applicable in the United States as far as I know. The equal law for residential is the FHA (Fair Housing Act).
re: the OP. I hate those scales in the Refs. But by far the one I really despise is the internet charge.
I was the ADA compliance officer and I can say there is no such requirement for a refridgerator. The thing is not EVERYONE has to be accommodated. The ADA has a list of MINIMUM guidelines and as long as you meet it that it the extent of your liablity.
So if I have 10 handicapped accessable rooms, and they’re occupied, than that is that. If a person wants to check in and there is no handicapped accessable room that’s tough.
Also the ADA has limits. I worked in a hotel which is a historical landmark, and as such, the design couldn’t be altered and we had weird shaped elevators that couldn’t accommodate wheelchairs. Anyone with a wheel chair had to fold it up, sit on a seat or be taken by an employee up the freight elevator. We couldn’t alter the design as it was a historical landmark
But you see we made a REASONABLE accommodation. It’s not up to the disabled person to decide.
Most disabled people are extremely understanding but some will do things like expect the bell staff to take their guide dog out for a walk to use the “doggy restroom” this is the responsibility of the owner. Guide animals must always be under the disabled person’s control. The ADA allows for the removal of guests and customers who are not doing this.
A comfort animal has been the subject of lawsuits but so far that is up in the air. A service animal according to the ADA has to provide an “actual service” for the disabled person not just “comfort them,” but there are still some lawsuits outstanding so that could change.
I’m always somewhat amused at how thin the capitalist skin sometimes is in the United States, and how little you have to scratch to get at the indignant socialist beneath the free-market exterior. I’m also impressed at the different things that can set people off: for some, it’s wi-fi or parking; for others, it might be lattes or designer clothing.
Your post asks, in effect, “How dare the hotel charge a rate that people are willing to pay for a service that they need or want?”
As far as i know, they don’t dip into your purse and pull out money for wi-fi unless you actually authorize the charge. And, to my knowledge, they don’t forcibly tow your car into their parking lot for the purpose of charging you $25 per day. Chicago’s a big city, and if the OP didn’t want to pay their prices, he was free to search elsewhere for parking.
I’m also curious as to how you arrived at the determination that $10, specifically, is the appropriate and fair amount for a hotel to charge for parking. Does this limit apply universally? Are hotels in cities where space is at a premium and incredibly expensive, like New York and San Francisco, supposed to adhere to the same upper limit as, say, Cleveland or Baltimore? How many places in Manhattan or San Francisco do you think offer short-term parking at a rate of $10 per day?
Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, you somehow managed to conclude I’m anti capitalist by the reasoning I don’t like that wifi isn’t included in the price? How the hell lattes got into it, I’ll never know, though neither do you.
Hotels are a complete ripoff for the things you don’t use. If you don’t use the pool, you subsidize someone else using it. Or the gym, or the weight room. Ditto for any service - the discounted spa, the included breakfast and so on.
Since when are there only 5 star hotels in NYC, San Francisco? Methinks you speak out of total inexperience with anything outside of a Holiday Inn
Wifi is something that a majority of guests use, be it on their laptops or their cell phones. It should be built into the price, not a way to bilk customers who have no other means of getting service. Hotel wifi is a monopoly, not capitalism. It’s identical to monopolies that cable providers have - fuck you guys, if you want our service, you have to pay exorbitant rates with no competition! In just a short while of FIOS being introduced in my area, prices have dropped substantially, with both FIOS and Comcast. There are no more 2 year lock-in to plans or rates; the services are offered month to month with no fee to cancel, and monthly rates have dropped 20% or more.
Reaching into my pocket for $25 is theft. Are you insinuating that I’m suggesting it is in effect theft? Serious question: is English your first language? Second guess would be out of touch university professor.
I never said you were anti-capitalist. I was making a point about how, so often, people who seem to support the spirit and ideals of capitalism are still willing to assert that things like wi-fi and parking have some objective, fair value, and that “charging more than [$X] for [such things] is bullshit.”
The value of these things is what someone is willing to pay for them in the market. If people are willing to pay $25 for parking, then charging $10 for parking is not, by definition, bullshit.
Also, while you now start whining about “things you don’t use,” that was not your original focus, you stupid bint. You didn’t complain about a single one of those things. You complained specifically about things that you don’t have to use, and that you can choose to avoid, arguing that they are overpriced. Like wi-fi, and parking.
I never suggested that there were only five-star hotels in those cities, you reading-challenged chucklehead.
I said that those cities are places where real estate is incredibly expensive. And that means any real estate. Which is why parking is expensive in those places. Parking requires space, and when space it as a premium and in demand, it will cost more to use. Do you need this basic concept explained further?
What? God, you are even fucking dumber than i thought.
Do you have any idea what a monopoly is? Because a hotel charging for wi-fi ain’t it, you economically-retarded ditz. Hotels are free to compete with one another for your business, and part of this competition might include the issue of whether or not to offer wi-fi as part of the cost of the room, or as an optional extra. Hell, you’re even free to purchase a wireless plan from a provider like Verizon or AT&T, or tether your cellphone, so that when you stay at a hotel you can completely avoid the need to use its wireless connection.
It’s hilarious that, only a few paragraphs earlier, you complained that “Hotels are a complete ripoff for the things you don’t use. If you don’t use the pool, you subsidize someone else using it.” Surely exactly the same thing applies to wi-fi. If they include wi-fi with the price of the room, then people who don’t need it and don’t use it are effectively subsidizing the people who do. Why not simply charge people who want it, and not charge people who don’t?
I actually agree with you that, in many cases, cable companies operate as monopolies. It’s the one, single thing you’ve sort of managed to get right. Here in San Diego, there are two cable companies, but instead of competing with one another, they have been allowed to split the city in two, with Cox having a monopoly over the southern section, and Time-Warner controlling the area north of the river.
Still, even in the case of cable companies, there is competition of sorts. You can go with DSL for internet, and a satellite service if you want hundreds of TV channels.
Also, cable falls, to an extent, under the special case of a natural monopoly, one where technical issues and cost of entry mean that it can, under certain circumstances, make sense to have a single provider. Railways were, for a long time, considered one example of this, as were utilities like electricity, water, and gas. Companies were often allowed by government to exercise monopolies in those areas in return for investing large sums in the necessary infrastructure and accepting regulation of rates and other types of public oversight.
And none of this has diddly-squat to do with hotel wi-fi.
Wow, your username really is appropriate, isn’t it?
My point was simply that services such as hotel wi-fi and hotel parking are, even for guests of the hotel, completely optional. No-one is forcing you to pay them.
You are welcome to think that $25 per day is too much to pay for parking, and that $10 or $15 a day is too much to pay for wireless. I happen to agree with you. You know what i do when i think that? I don’t pay it. Which is exactly what you are also free to do as a hotel guest. It doesn’t make the hotel a monopoly, and it doesn’t mean that the prices charged by the hotel constitute some sort of “bullshit” or unfair amount.
I’ve been jumping back and forth between forums, and i was sure this thread was in the Pit. I only realized that it was in MPSIMS after the edit window had closed, so i couldn’t fix my post.
Apologies to the mods and to lindsaybluth. My argument stands, but i apologize for and retract the insults.
I’ve put my post, containing the same arguments, in MPSIMS-friendly language, in case you’re actually interested in dealing with the issue.
I never said you were anti-capitalist. I was making a point about how, so often, people who seem to support the spirit and ideals of capitalism are still willing to assert that things like wi-fi and parking have some objective, fair value, and that “charging more than [$X] for [such things] is bullshit.”
The value of these things is what someone is willing to pay for them in the market. If people are willing to pay $25 for parking, then charging $10 for parking is not, by definition, bullshit.
Also, while you now start talking about “things you don’t use,” that was not your original focus. You didn’t complain about a single one of those things. You complained specifically about things that you don’t have to use, and that you can choose to avoid, arguing that they are overpriced. Like wi-fi, and parking.
I never suggested that there were only five-star hotels in those cities.
I said that those cities are places where real estate is incredibly expensive. And that means any real estate. Which is why parking is expensive in those places. Parking requires space, and when space it as a premium and in demand, it will cost more to use.
What?
Do you have any idea what a monopoly is? Because a hotel charging for wi-fi ain’t it. Hotels are free to compete with one another for your business, and part of this competition might include the issue of whether or not to offer wi-fi as part of the cost of the room, or as an optional extra. Hell, you’re even free to purchase a wireless plan from a provider like Verizon or AT&T, or tether your cellphone, so that when you stay at a hotel you can completely avoid the need to use its wireless connection.
It’s hilarious that, only a few paragraphs earlier, you complained that “Hotels are a complete ripoff for the things you don’t use. If you don’t use the pool, you subsidize someone else using it.” Surely exactly the same thing applies to wi-fi. If they include wi-fi with the price of the room, then people who don’t need it and don’t use it are effectively subsidizing the people who do. Why not simply charge people who want it, and not charge people who don’t?
I actually agree with you that, in many cases, cable companies operate as monopolies. It’s the one, single thing you’ve sort of managed to get right. Here in San Diego, there are two cable companies, but instead of competing with one another, they have been allowed to split the city in two, with Cox having a monopoly over the southern section, and Time-Warner controlling the area north of the river.
Still, even in the case of cable companies, there is competition of sorts. You can go with DSL for internet, and a satellite service if you want hundreds of TV channels.
Also, cable falls, to an extent, under the special case of a natural monopoly, one where technical issues and cost of entry mean that it can, under certain circumstances, make sense to have a single provider. Railways were, for a long time, considered one example of this, as were utilities like electricity, water, and gas. Companies were often allowed by government to exercise monopolies in those areas in return for investing large sums in the necessary infrastructure and accepting regulation of rates and other types of public oversight.
And none of this has diddly-squat to do with hotel wi-fi.
My point was simply that services such as hotel wi-fi and hotel parking are, even for guests of the hotel, completely optional. No-one is forcing you to pay them.
You are welcome to think that $25 per day is too much to pay for parking, and that $10 or $15 a day is too much to pay for wireless. I happen to agree with you. You know what i do when i think that? I don’t pay it. Which is exactly what you are also free to do as a hotel guest. It doesn’t make the hotel a monopoly, and it doesn’t mean that the prices charged by the hotel constitute some sort of “bullshit” or unfair amount.
Not paying for wi-fi when you stay at a hotel is certainly an option, assuming that you either don’t need online access during your stay, or that there are other ways for you to get online if you need to. But if you drive to a hotel and then find out that they’re going to charge you for parking, you usually don’t have any choice but to pay it; generally there is no free parking withing walking distance of the hotel, which is why the hotel can get away with charging for parking.
Bullshit does not equal “fair” value. If they want to charge 800 million clams a night, that’s their prerogative. It’s still bullshit, though.
Okay here’s the thing: when you don’t allow competition, it’s not free market “capitalism”, it’s a monopoly. You’re locking the person into it. I’ve stayed at places where “free” wifi is offered. I get there, check in, and it’s shit. The wired connection is $10/day and works well. I can’t just up and leave the hotel without paying for at least one night - they’ve lied and trapped me into staying there and paying their bogus fees. They’ve wasted my time as well - even if I take the measure of hopping over to another hotel, I’ve wasted 90 minutes in all likelihood.
We were talking about pricing and price gouging, specifically. Hotels are in the business of grouping things together and charging the same price to everyone regardless of your usage. Therefore some people are subsidizing others’ usage. Which is stupid. Hell, I’m all for charging passengers by the pound for airline flights. Would it be fair? Hell yes. Would people riot? Absolutely.
Do you know of anyone who has a 3g card that doesn’t use it for business? Whose card isn’t comped by their employer? I sure don’t. $30/month for a card that provides slower service is pretty bogus, though with the new MiFi it may become more tenable than being gouged by nice hotels. Hotels themselves compete, but they often lie about their internet service, including the quality and speed.
My argument and my experience is that the majority of people use wifi. Just like they include the price of flushing a toilet for everyone, showering, and cable, they should include wifi. Frankly, more people use wifi than watch the TV in my experience, so wifi could be included and TV axed, if we’re sticking with the “all inclusive” model. Or pool access could be additional and wifi included. You’re welcome to start a poll and see what people would rather have included and would rather shell out for. I think we’ll see that people would rather have wifi included and pay more for the pool - at least people who truly travel. Those who stay in Motel 6’s with their 3 kids and bring a cooler no doubt are going for the pool.
Sort of? High praise. :rolleyes:
Only someone who lives in a region with sun and surf would say “You can get satellite!” as a reasonable excuse. Do you know who has satellite in Pittsburgh? The very wealthy, so they can get all the NFL games (they also have cable, by the way). And the poor and working class, because it’s much cheaper and shittier than cable because you have to clean the thing off to get it to work. You see satellites in rough neighborhoods and in the student ghettos, nowhere else It doesn’t work in high wind or rainy situations, either. DSL is slower, therefore not part of the consideration - it’s not even considered high speed at it’s lower rates.
Make sense to have a single provider? Maybe if you think the government isn’t a piece of shit, like most Americans do these days. Gas is a great example - there’s plenty of competition in Pittsburgh for heating, and you can lock in a great rate as a result if you do your homework, paying sometimes half as much as other providers offer. Maybe in ye olde days of cable we needed single provider (I doubt whether you or I fully know the story) but that time has been long, long gone.
Again, nobody’s holding a gun to my head. But if I have no other options, well, I gotta pay it, don’t I? If, pre-FIOS in my city, they decided to triple the internet rates, what would I do? Would I go without or pay it? I’d pay it. Just as most people with enough means would. Since I can’t simply hook up to another wifi source, it’s a monopoly.
It’s bullshit, but it’s not unfair. They are not the same things. I don’t think the price should be regulated by any outside source. I do think that hotels should be held accountable towards their promises “Free wifi!”. They should plainly display their additional fees during booking or over the phone during booking.The game of “gotcha!” is tired and time-consuming. Just as the OP’s Heineken debacle is absord.
Sometimes you don’t pay in money, you pay in time and headaches. The OP paid dearly in his time, and unfortunately you can’t bill the hotel for wasted time.
First, your comment about “driv[ing] to a hotel and then find[ing] out that they’re going to charge you for parking” assumes that you have no way of working this out beforehand. If i were booking a hotel room, and driving to the hotel, and i knew that i would need to park my car for the duration of my stay, you can be damn sure i’d inquire beforehand whether the hotel charges for parking, and how much it might cost.
Also, i’ve lived and worked in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the United States. Before and during my college years, i worked in hotels in Australia, the UK, and Canada. In my experience, almost every hotel in the downtown area of large cities either does not provide parking at all (some smaller hotels), or charges for parking. I literally cannot imagine being surprised to learn that a downtown hotel in a major city charges for parking.
As for alternatives within walking distance, there’s a couple of issues there, too.
First, the OP’s hotel is in Chicago. According to the Chicago Parking Map, there are at least 20 (probably closer to 40) parking garages and other parking facilities within about a 5-block walk of the Swissotel. In my experience, the situation is similar for downtown-area hotels in most large cities. We’re not talking about some B&B in the middle of Vermont, or a mountain lodge in the Grand Tetons here.
It’s true, as you say, that there is often no free parking within walking distance, but in many cases there’s virtually no free parking at all to be had in the busy downtown areas of major cities. And i’m not sure why there should be.
Parking takes up space that could be used for other things, and space costs money. If parking is “free,” that means that it is, in many ways, being subsidized by the people who don’t need it. Now, in the suburbs, or here in southern California (same thing, really), the ubiquity of car culture combined with the lack of decent transit means that businesses often find it in their interest to provide parking for their customers. But in cities, where people often arrive by taxi or by transit, and don’t need parking, i see no problem with charging the people who need to take up valuable space with a car.
And there are always other choices. When my wife and i lived in Baltimore, we would spend 2-4 weeks each year in New York (generally 2-3 visits of a few days to 2 weeks each). Usually we took the train or the bus, but on a couple of occasions we drove. We were grad students on a limited income, and we didn’t want to spend $20-30 a day just to park the car, so we made a trade-off between convenience and cost.
I would drop my wife at the apartment where we stayed, along with all our luggage, and then drive out to a semi-industrial area of Brooklyn (just east of Williamsburg), find a free parking place on a non-residential street, and catch the subway back into town. It took an extra half-hour or so to do this, but it saved paying for parking. When our visit was over, i would go back and pick up the car. If we were there for more than about five days, i would make a trip over in the middle of our stay to move the car for street sweeping.
I agree that $25 a day is a lot to pay for parking. That’s why i don’t do it. And if i had to do it, i’d probably complain about it. But it’s not like these are hidden fees that no-one knows about, and it’s not like you can’t avoid them by choosing not to drive, or by seeking out alternative parking (paid or otherwise) away from the hotel.
This, quite simply, is not the economic definition of a monopoly. Go ahead, start a thread in GQ or GD asking whether a hotel charging for wi-fi constitutes a monopoly as understood by economists. We have plenty of people with economic training on these boards. See what they have to say.
If they tell you that they have free wi-fi, and the wi-fi doesn’t work, that’s dishonest business practice. I’m not defending it, and i have not defended it anywhere in this thread. It still isn’t a monopoly though.
But what, exactly, is price gouging?
We’re not talking about a natural disaster here, where a hardware store triples the price of plywood boards just as a hurricane is on the way, or where a store charges $20 for a gallon of water in the aftermath of the hurricane. We’re talking about a set of charges that you can inquire about up front, that you can compare with competing hotels, and that you can choose to accept or reject.
Your logic here makes no sense at all.
First, hotels are bad because they charge for wi-fi instead of including it with your room rate. Then, hotels are bad because, instead of charging you for the things you use, they group things together and charge everyone the same, which means that some people subsidize other people’s usage.
There are plenty of people whose only need for an internet connection when they are away from home is perfectly well served by their smartphone (Blackberry, iPhone, Droid, etc.) or by something like an iPad with 3G function. These people might stay in a hotel and have no need for the hotel’s wi-fi service. Why should they subsidize other people who want and need wi-fi for their laptops? Isn’t it fair for the hotel simply to charge people who need the service, rather than building the cost of wi-fi into everyone’s room rate?
Just because 3G cards are $30/month and are mainly used by people on business doesn’t mean that others don’t have the option of getting one. And if you choose not to get one, then you know that you might need to fork over $10/day if you stay in a fancy hotel. Again, this is your choice.
Lying about the quality and speed and availability ofinternet service is, as i’ve already said, dishonest business practice, and i don’t support it. But it’s separate from the issue of charging for (good) wi-fi service.
You might be right about what people would prefer; you might not. I know lots of people who would have no need for wi-fi, simply because they can check their email and do other essential web-based stuff on their smartphones.
But, no matter what people would prefer, it’s still not an issue of monopoly. It’s a matter of consumer choices and preferences. I have no problem with consumers using their buying power (or the threat of withholding their buying power) to influence corporate decisions. If you don’t like the fact that the Marriott (or whoever) charges for wi-fi,let them know that they will get no more of your money until they include wi-fi in the room rate. And do your best to stay at hotels where wi-fi is included. If enough people do this, they can affect the policies of the hotels.
Your rant about satellite is simply not true. I knew plenty of people with satellite in Baltimore, many of whom lived neither in rough neighborhoods nor student ghettos, and the service was generally fine. Anyway, i’ve already conceded that cable does, in many cases, constitute a monopoly of sorts.
Never sugested otherwise. And, in fact, as you note, plenty of the services that were once considered natural monopolies have, thanks to new technology and changing political policies, been opened up to competition. I was simply pointing out that, in industries where huge upfront infrastructure costs make initial investment unattractive, economists have recognized that allowing a monopoly (often temporary) in return for undertaking to build the system has often been an economically sound policy.
As i’ve already said, in that case you’re mostly right. If Cox decided to triple my cost overnight, i wouldn’t have much choice except to pay. But if they did, there’s also a good chance that the government authorities that have allowed the current non-competitive arrangements to persist would feel the need to step in and either insist on competition or regulate the costs. At least, i hope that’s what they’d do, although there’s no guarantee.
I agree with all this, but again, as i said, this is an issue of honesty and of consumer pressure. It’s not an issue of monopoly, and as long as the charges are upfront and the service is as-advertised, there’s nothing monopolistic about a hotel charging users for wi-fi.
