Did You Want Sheets On the Bed, Too?

Written by Bruce Tepper, CTC, CITE

Why you need a good travel agent.

At the Lexham Gardens in London's South Kensington.  Rooms start at $35 per night when booked on the Internet.  The lowest priced rooms lack windows and offer only 60 square feet of space.

Housekeeping services, including bedding and toiletries, cost extra.  Travelers are advised to bring their own to keep the cost of the room down.  There are no mini-bars, no gym, no swimming pool, no closets, no telephones, no in-room safes and no elevators.  The rooms do have flat screen televisions, but guests have to rent remote controls from the front desk to use them.

If your clients don't mind cramped, windowless quarters, bringing the shampoo and sheets from home and making their own bed every day, it's a great price and a new way to do business.

Paying Extra

But let's not single out budget hotels.  Remember when cruise lines were really all-inclusive, except for the liquor, shopping and gambling?  Today many of the cruise lines are charging for soft drinks, and most of them now have restaurants that are not included in the price, or for which clients must pay a surcharge.

How about more upscale hotels?  Many keep their room rates down by adding a $10-$20 resort fee, a $2 to $5 fee for the in-room safe, a $2 to $10 per day fee for using the telephone, $9-$12 per day for high speed Internet access, a few bucks as an energy surcharge and maybe another $50 if you decide to check out early.  And, by the way, your clients will pay most of these additional fees whether they use the services or not.

It's called "unbundling," and thanks largely to the Internet, it's now a way of life in many industries.

The Internet tends to turn most products and services into commodities in the minds of consumers, and that includes travel.  If you can look at a chart with a bunch of prices for a given product or service, consumers who don't know any better (which is a lot of them)

will opt for the cheapest price, assuming that it's really an apples-to-apples comparison.  Suppliers can tack on additional charges later to get the price point back to where they want it to be.

Playing the Game

Don't be too quick to blame hotels, cruise lines or any other industry suppliers for playing the game.  They're only responding to consumers mania to get the absolute cheapest price.  This tendency is largely practiced by so-called savvy Internet shoppers who think they know what they're up against.  You've got to admit, $35 per night for a hotel room sounds pretty fantastic.  At least you get the bed to sleep on.

There is a positive side, however, for travel agents in this scenario: it's a chance for them to apply their knowledge and add value helping thier clients get the best deal, which is what most of them really want in the first place. (The "best deal" and the "lowest price" are often not the same thing.) The best experience is what the travel agent can provide.

The travel agent is the interpreter who explains the differences: the expert who guides the client through the maze.  As more consumers discover what's not included, they're going to start asking more questions- and who knows?  Maybe they'll become a bit distrustful of Internet shopping offering cheaper rates that don't come with expert advice.

Because more and more have been burned a few times trying to do it themselves, but it's likely that more and more people will start asking questions as to what's really included?.

In a sense, this is nothing new.  Less sophisticated travelers have complained for years about that "direct" flight that still makes a stop somewhere along the way, or their "deluxe" room that's not being quite as deluxe as they thought it would be.

Many Web sites are pandering to unsophisticated buyers who are easily taken in by several deceptive factors. "Travelwizard.com is the exception, taking the guesswork out of the equation, and providing only the very best, highly qualified properties, paired with easy to reach, knowledgable travel agents that have specific destination knowledge."

Fallacy #1

The Internet booking engines always has the best deals.  A recent University of Pennsylvania study found that 68 percent of the consumers it polled believe that travel web sites are required to offer the lowest airfares available anywhere.

Fallacy # 2

It's easy to comparison shop on the Web, since most travel products are commodities that are virtually identical to each other.

Ironically, all of this defies a basic law of economics.  When I was studying for my MBA, my economics professor introduced us to the TANSTAFL principle.  The acronym stands for: " There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

And yet, a lot of clients are still looking for that free lunch.  When they see a hotel room for $35 a night, they think they've found it.  Just remind them to remember the sheets, pillows, shampoo and cleaning supplies.  Maybe staying at a campground would be a better experience.  At least they get more than 60 square feet of space.  They might even have a window in their tent.

Bruce Tepper, CTC is a noted consultant and speaker in the travel and tourism industry.