Hotels and perqs

I was at a conference this week in California.  Most of the conference attendees stayed at one particular Hyatt because of its proximity to the conference locale.

This was a very good stay with only a couple of blips in my expectations.  It wasn't any false advertising by the hotel.  Without getting into all of the minutiae three pros and three cons stood out during my stay.  On the pro side:

• Top-notch lobby and restaurant service.  Extremely helpful employees all around.
• Great hotel food.  I've had some lousy hotel food, but the continental breakfast (not complimentary) had fresh everything, including fresh-squeezed orange juice.
• The comfiest bed I've ever slept in.

The things that annoyed me a little:

• Mandatory “resort fee.”  Ten dollars a day paid for a $5 (per day) food and beverage voucher at the hotel's restaurants and two bottled waters in the room.  The vouchers weren't a big deal, and the room wasn't stocked with a “mini-bar” that would trigger onerous charges on my bill if I partook.  So I give them points for being up-front.  This isn't always the case.
• No complimentary coffee.  The for-pay option in the lobby was Starbucks, at least.
• No complimentary Internet access.  This got under my skin a lot more than the others — almost $20 for two days of Internet access.  Ouch!  A business center was available, but that cost the same as wireless access in the room.  I've never had to pay for this while on travel.  Sometimes I've needed to use the business center but the worst there was that I had to wait for the people in front of me to check their e-mail.

These are picky things — dealing more with perqs than with basic service.  Granted, I don't travel a lot, and I certainly don't stay in upscale hotels when I do (this hotel was covered under per diem when I was there).  The hotels I stay at most of the time are not resort quality but are more of the “two-star” variety — maybe an outdoor pool, little four-cupper coffeemaker in the room, spotty wireless Internet access that caves under load, serviceable bed but not the most comfortable night's sleep.

So my irritation with these nickel/dime charges might be that I don't frequent the upper-tier hotels much.  Maybe Internet access isn't included because it's a resort — perhaps checking e-mail is the last thing a lot of the guests want to do while they're there.  So why include it?  Instead they can provide other rest and relaxation aspects of the hotel experience with the basic hotel fee.  No coffee-maker in the room?  Those little packets aren't Starbucks, that's for sure, and unless I bring my own water I'm making the coffee with tap water.  It works for someone with blunted tastebuds who'll take caffeine wherever they can get it (like me!), but is that the image a resort wants to convey?  Probably not.

Anyway, the main lesson I learned is that different types of hotels offer different types of complimentary service, and that a more expensive hotel doesn't necessarily offer everything that a mid-range hotel offers “plus a whole lot more.”  It makes sense to check beforehand what's included so that you can plan around it or at least know what you're getting into.  It's not so much “you get what you pay for” as it is “What are you getting for what you pay?”