Lost Weekend: A Cautionary Tale about Missing the Point
Don’t overlook practical details in search of big things
Posted Jul 8, 10:00 am in business, business models, economics, experiences, marketing, unanswered questions
A few days ago, I was attending my cousin’s wedding in Toledo, Ohio. While I was there, I was put up in a 4-star, $250-a-night hotel. Words like “4-star” are supposed indicators of quality and detail-oriented service. The funny thing is, I’ve stayed at many such hotels on business in the past, and I almost never find them living up to their supposed standards of quality. For $250-$400 a night, all the loose ends should be tied up; instead, what I almost uniformly find are a flashy exterior, a so-so in-house gym, and rooms with really nice furniture— and not much more. Those things are fine, but it’s the oversights that perplex me.
This hotel, for example— which was clearly the type of hotel that high-end business travelers were supposed to be staying at— had a sub-dialup wireless internet connection that literally required minutes for you to load simple pages like Google.com. It’s great that they had a beautiful hardwood desk that I could put my laptop on, but if I’m doing work, the desk just needs to be functional; it would be so much better if I could check my email without going into a coma. And this is not a flaw that I only noticed that this hotel; I’ve seen it in countless upper-crust hotels. How expensive could it be to fix this problem? If I’m paying $250 a night, at least give me more than a 1 bar signal. If annoyed business patrons can’t do their work, you’d better believe that eventually, they’re going to try staying somewhere else.
Other such bizarre oversights abounded at this hotel. The elevator wouldn’t allow you to push buttons to go to any floor unless you inserted your room keycard every time you used it. And the slot to put the card in was in the elevator, located in a place where you’d have to reach over strangers to put it in, and then elbow people in the face to get the card out again. The slot could have easily been placed on the outside of the elevator if this type of security was really necessary. Five-hundred wedding guests were annoyed all weekend by this ridiculous system that likely damaged their opinion of the hotel more than what was made up by the apparent offer of security.
Moreover, when I made it up to the 13th floor (I thought they stopped going to that floor!), the Executive Suite, the floors were rather unsightly and the wallpaper was straight-up peeling off the walls. I have no idea how much those high-powered, presidential rooms cost, but from the looks of their furniture and size, I’d have to say a pretty penny. And yet, the management has ensured that the first thing a patron would notice was that their $800 a night (or however much it cost) wasn’t going towards making the premises look and feel clean. The furniture was really nice, but there was too much conflicting visual stimuli. If you have oak-lined walls and crystal chandeliers, at least make sure there aren’t holes in the carpet and black stains everywhere. These have a way of eradicating the positive impression you get from the antique furniture.
Another strange recurring theme is that many of these expensive hotels don’t give you a complementary continental breakfast (AKA free donut). Yeah, perhaps this isn’t worth much, but it has a way of making people who sometimes stay at cheaper places like Red Roof Inn wonder what the heck they’re getting for their $300 a night. At least when I’m at Red Roof Inn, I can have a cup of orange juice and a cheese danish before I’m out the door, without having to endure a long sit-down meal that costs an arm-and-a-leg.
With the exception of having rooms that open into a hallway instead of opening to the parking lot, there’s little value that I can see in these expensive hotels, aside from the obligatory ego-stroking for your insecure corporate executives (though perhaps this is valuable?). The cheap hotels seem to be better at delivering real value for their $40-$75 a night. You get a comparably clean room, internet connections that almost always work better than those in expensive places, and well, a free donut.