Hotel Greed - A New High (or a New Low!)
I’ve long railed against the price-gouging policy of hotels forcing guests staying over holiday periods (such as Xmas or New Year) to pay for a “compulsory gala dinner”. Even when that dinner is decent value (say around the $30 mark) I still think it is unfair to deny guests who have already paid for a room the right to choose where they eat, and see it as essentially a room rate increase in all but name.
I stayed at a hotel over Xmas last year, and as a regular leisure client of the property I was able to negotiate myself out of their gala dinner, but it was typical of the genre - a standard Western/Asian buffet, with the mooted “entertainment” consisting solely of the hotel staff murdering classic songs, ie karaoke. Much better Xmas dinners were available in the town’s restaurants, and that’s where I ate.
So I was amused, shocked and forced to pen this blog posting when, yesterday, I received a new 2010-11 contract from a resort in Mui Ne. Like most resorts, they have a compulsory New Year’s Eve gala dinner. The price? $195.00. Let’s just type that again. $195.00. I had to look at it several times. Do they mean $19.50? 195,000VND? Or maybe even $195.00 per couple? No. It’s $195.00 PER PERSON! So if two people are staying in one of their rooms over New Year, that’s an extra $390.00 on top of the room rate.
Even worse, their Lunar New Year gala dinner is a mere $30.00, so whilst it’s OK to fleece Westerners celebrating New Year, it’s not OK to do the same to locals celebrating Tet. I thought dual pricing was illegal in Vietnam these days.
Now I don’t care if this meal consists of fresh foie gras, Kobe beef, and scallops freshly plucked from the sea and delivered to your table by a naked Cheryl Cole. It is an absolute bloody rip-off, as I told the resort in my reply. I expect, and I sincerely hope, that they have the lowest occupancy in town over the festive period.
