No, not Paris Hilton. She’s just a shining example that you can be filty
rich and yet still be po’ white trash. No, I’m talking about where she
gets her money - Hilton Hotels.
Hilton Hotels are your standard business hotel. They cater to the
business traveler who is spending his or her company’s money. The rooms
are all very nice and comfortable, and there’s a good work environment
with a desk and a phone and all the things you like. There’s a nice TV
with many channels and may pay-per-view movies, all of which will show
up as “Guest Services” or something on the bill so your employer won’t
know you’re expensing your porn watching (although in Brazil, they
actually just have softcore on TV normally, but we’ll get to that later).
The problem I have with Hilton is that you pay extra for Every. Last.
Little. Thing. OK, the $10 mini-bottle from the mini-bar, fine. We all
know that the mini-bar is stupidly overpriced, but occasionally we need
it, so fine, extort your $5 more from us. Whatever. However, local calls
should not be metered *by the minute*. We’re calling across the street,
not a 976 number. And don’t tell me that everyone in Brazil has calls
metered by the minute, as they didn’t have them metered in Salvador or
Manaus.
Of course, they meter local calls, because people like me can dial into
a local modem and check mail. And they’d much rather I pay $30 a day for
a 128k connection. or I can pay $40 for 256K, on up to 1M. Gee, I get to
pay more for a faster pipe… lovely. Didn’t that go out when Compuserve
stopped the surcharge for 1200 baud modems vs 300 baud?
Random tourist hotels usually have free wireless, or at least free
broadband, and local calls are cheap. Even hotels in Japan have this,
and you breath out money in that country. So, yeah, a nice staff and
pretty room is fine, but really, if I’m in a place to get work done, I
really don’t want to have to keep adding on to the tab to get work done.
Just increase the price of the room by a few bucks and include it. And
if that causes people to go to other hotels? Well, then maybe perhaps
competition is doing what it’s supposed to do — drive prices down to
where they’re fair.
Hey,
I work at a hilton in South Carolina and the wireless is free and local calls are just 95 cents to connect. I guess I like my hotel pretty good it’s just these customers really make it hard to not jump over the counter and kick some tail. Yesterday I had to move a guy to 3 different rooms. He wanted one on the north side (In SC does it matter? You can face highway A or B.) Then wanted to be on our highest floor and then kept harrassing me about how the computer chair was not adjustable. Ug. There is nothing I can do about that one. No adjustable chairs should be put on our web site, I guess. But we aren’t really trying to screw you over in my hotel.
Ps. Porn movies come up MOVIE and then the price and if it’s over 12 dollars we all know what you have been up to, including your boss. Ha ha ha. Evil payback!