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In the world of tourism we hotel owners and general managers have been conditioned to value-add pretty much everything in our charge, we understand that to value add means to add things & services to our product and make them appear of greater value for money to the public, most of the time that is the case, “…its solid 101 marketing” I hear you say, and agree with you, …if it works, why change it?

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    It’s a Catch 22 situation, if we add more, we then often have to charge more, if we want to charge less then we must cut back somewhere…if we are really honest with ourselves we inevitably find that we are leveraging either our services or facilities to fit our marketing commitments, but is that really the only way to value add? In our quest to better each other, should we be asking ourselves these two question: are we over value-adding, and in the process further closing the gap that separates us as competitors? Are we imagining, but not giving what many of our travellers really want?
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    Maybe less Value Add Ons, and much better Value Deductions could be a better route to take for some hotel or resort?We also know that to do our job well we should always place ourselves in the position of our customers, but this is an area where we can go dreadfully wrong, when it comes to knowing and understanding what our customers really want and need, are we repeatedly revisiting the same waterhole or looking for new ones?The ever growing global economic contraction will sooner or later affect everyone in the accommodation industry (if it has not already), many more will close because the model that accommodation providers have adhered to for so long is no longer attractive to a sufficient number of travellers to keep the hotel viable. These operators may need to change from an “adding value” strategy to offering a “adding economy” strategy. One hotel company, Tune hotels identified this a while back, and it has worked well for them, there is no reason that it cannot work very well for others, the market for this new approach to hospitality can only grow as it is better understood, and marketed.
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    When we travel, and I mean really travel to discover, not simply transporting our bodies to an all inclusive resort for its myriad of facilities, we want to spend our money on the things we really need and not on all the things that advertisers have been trying to convince us we should want. We find that we are not only paying for what we are utilizing, but paying for an ever growing bewildering list of superfluous facilities and services that we do not want or will ever use during our stay.
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    As a guests, the cost of the things we do not use during our stay in a hotel or resort can sometimes represent a higher percentage of our total cost of stay than for the things we did use! Take the cost of fresh bath towels, bath mats, face cloths, and other linen found in a hotel room. Frankly who needs new ones every day?…I don’t. Same as bed linen, I will use the same ones for one week, and they will be still clean at the end of that week. Another guest may want clean linen every two days. I may bring my own soap, shampoo etc.. and never use the “complimentary toiletries”, another may ask for double quantities of these, many will take them home believing that they are free, well they are not, the guests is paying for them, plus the staffing, storage and transport of them. If you open the hotel window for fresh air in one room, and next door in another room another guest leaves the air conditioning on all day by tricking the cut off switch, why should you pay for his abuse, why shouldn't he pay more for his much larger ecological footprint? and so on…
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    Why should some have to pay for all the extra operating costs the hotel is compelled to carry in order to please guests that are wasteful? One can only wonder how much operating costs (hence room rates) would drop if guests excesses were curbed by a user-pay system, and how much competitive advantage would that hotel acquire by operating with a user pay system? The higher occupancy and cost savings resulting from this approach could easily compensate the lower spend per guests.
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    Why should some have to pay for all the extra operating costs the hotel is compelled to carry in order to please guests that are wasteful? One can only wonder how much operating costs (hence room rates) would drop if guests excesses were curbed by a user pay system, and how much competitive edge / advantage would that hotel or resort acquire by operating with what is essentially a user pay system? The higher occupancy and cost savings resulting from this approach could easily compensate the lower spend per guests.

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Categories: Travel

Recent edits by: Iliveunderawesomerock, John Nicholls

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