I spent three nights recently in the guest house at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. Very pleasant — and it was priced at $20/night (obviously heavily subsidized). In addition, however, there was a one-time $16 charge for cleaning at the end of my stay.
This pricing scheme was clever since cleaning of the room, and certainly of linens, is typically done in full only at the end of a several-day stay. Why should someone pay the same per night for a one-day stay as for a three-day stay? They shouldn’t. Pricing like this in hotels more generally would reflect hotels’ costs more accurately and prevent long-stay guests from subsidizing short-stay guests. I would expect that, as concerns increase about pollution resulting from excessive use of detergent (“please place towels on racks if you don’t wish to re-use them”), we will see more of this kind of pricing.
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Mr. Hamermesh, this model is already quite widespread in the US in extended stay hotels/motels. Brands such as Residence Inn, Homewood Suites, and so on. In fact, many of them don’t even service the room every day, they just take the trash out. Also, most hotels now place a sign in the room that if you will hang your towels to dry, they will not replace them that day.
I am not an economist, just a traveller, but I would assume that the cost of paying the cleaning personnel would be the primary cleaning expense. These individuals need to bring home the same salary regardless of the fluctuations in lengths of stay at any given time, no?
The model does exist depending on the type of hotel. This is not 1980 where there are fewer hotels. Now, in between any major airport and the local “business park” you will find a Marriott, a Courtyard, a Residence Inn, a Fairfield, and a Spring Hill Suites… they all have different pricing models.
But, as far as the fear of subsidizing goes… Should we also charge more for people who use more energy in their rooms? Or who take more from the continental breakfast? Why not put a price on every individual activity: time on the treadmill, in the pool, did you take a newspaper from the lobby? Did you sit in the lobby and watch the game on the big screen? You were in a double room, but you moved the pillows on both beds.
Hotels become the new airlines? Charging for every service separately?
DavyNC is right, for the most part, the extended stay places already operate on that model. And in my experience, the luxury hotels and resorts charge for individual services already – whereas at the middle of the road (Fairfield) type hotel, you get everything in one lump sum. So, the consumer already has a choice of their pricing model.
Where’s the incentive for the hotels to change their pricing model? If they can charge me the same price for a 1 day stay and a 5 day stay and do less (relative) work on the 5 day stay, why should they change? It seems to me, they’re making more per day and I’m none the wiser.
I don’t believe this will work unless and until people start demanding it. Perhaps on my next trip, I’ll ask for a discount for them not having to wash my towels and linens every day. It’ll be interesting to see how far I get. I’m not expecting much.
In a normal full-service hotel there shouldn’t be any meaningful difference in operating cost netween one night and multi-night guests other than the possibility that the guest reuses the towels. The room has to be cleaned every day, the restaurant has to stay open whether the guest eats there or not, as does the bar, the gift shop and every other element of full service. In many hotels the food and beverage department is a perennial money loser despite the high prices. The room rate subsidizes all of those services plus the meeting rooms and pre-function space for most group business.
Sorry, but don’t expect to see those rates go down as we enter the recovery.
This is obvious… if you keep it a separate charge than when someone comparison shops it isn’t part of the price that they are looking at.
This is the unintended consequence of the supposed transparency in pricing that the Internet brings. Vendors just find other ways to create pricing opacity, and fees and charges are the easiest way to do it.
J.Ja
Just like the airlines, if hotels start to tack on charges for certain “as-needed” services, under the guise of this kind of model, they will also need to lower their room rates to show the customer the difference. If they keep their room rates the same, then they are just milking the customer for more $$ (just like the airlines – same seat, same price, but now you pay to bring your clothes with you).
Many hotels already do this by offering reduced rates or free nights for multi-night stays. It’s just not quite as obvious.