Category: General Reflections
Krista and I made it to sunny Orlando for the C&MA General Council. If you so desire, you can watch the business sessions live. Also, I will provide some recaps here this week.
We are staying in The Peabody, an (apparently) prestigious hotel. It's famous for their ducks which parade out of the elevator every morning, across a red carpet to a marble fountain in the foyer where they will stay until they retrace their steps in the evening. Because of the price, I would not usually stay in such a nice place, but because the Alliance is occupying so many rooms, they were able to negotiate a price well below the norm. However, when I consider the every day price and what it includes and compare them to the kinds of hotels that I would normally stay in, I'm left scratching my head a little.
For example, when I arrive at an average hotel, I walk in, check in, and head for the room. When I pull up to the Peabody, there are fourteen nicely dressed young men who, without asking, pull my bags out of the trunk and tell me to have a nice stay, which means, "Hey, I just did 2.7 seconds worth of labor for you, give me some money." Or another example, we arrived in the room to find that there is no coffee anywhere. When I inquired at the desk, a nice young woman informed me that there is complementary coffee served every morning from 5:30 AM to 7:00 AM in the lobby. If I would prefer not to make myself presentable at that hour of the day and trek downstairs and drink the Joe in the loud surroundings of the hotel entryway, I can always order a pot of coffee from room service. (I'm sure it would be less than $20.) In the kinds of hotels that I frequent, there is a coffee maker right there on the counter. Instead of getting dressed and descending six floors, I could just walk six steps and push the on button. Also, my kind of hotels have free shuttle services to Disney World and Universal Studios (I checked), but the Peabody allows you the privilege of paying $17 per person, one way. (But, to be fair, they do throw in a free day's pass for the trolley which takes you to within a mile of the theme park.)
I'm not complaining here so much as observing what an interesting culture we live in. The budget hotels include a number of amenities, while the luxury hotels, which charge 3, 4, maybe 5 times as much, charge you extra for virtually everything. And yet, people will pay.
But, they have nice ducks.