The Economist looked at a robot serving guests at a hotel in Silicon Valley:

• The robot is called “botlr”, has a bow tie, and can deliver food and other items to guest rooms.
• As they don’t need to be awkwardly tipped, travelers may come to prefer robot bellhops.
• In lieu of a tip Botlr does ask that guests tweet a thank you message.
• The hotel experience in general is increasingly getting rid of humans. Check in and check out can be done online, phones can act as keycards, and concierges can be reached via Twitter.

Read about why the writer thinks that handing out tips to humans might just be worth it after all, what unions think of the robot, and more over here.

Read more of Centives’ coverage of room service here.

Source: The Economist

TripAdvisor did an analysis of room service across the world:

• The average total cost of room service in American cities is $55.
• In the rest of the world it is $45.
• Denver, Seattle, and Minneapolis have the cheapest room service in the US.
• Las Vegas, New York City, and Washington D.C. are the most expensive American cities for in room dining.
• Three of the cheapest cities for room service around the world are in Africa. The cities are Tunis (Tunisia), Cape Town (South Africa), and Marrakech (Morocco).
• On the other end of the scale Scandinavian cities such as Helsinki (Finland), Oslo (Norway), and Stockholm (Sweden) will make you pay dearly for your food.
• Surprisingly the price of the hotel you stay at has no correlation with the price you pay for room service.

Read more details from the study, see its methodology, find out where other cities rank, and how things like dry cleaning and vodka costs compare over here.

Source: TripAdvisor

Via: Quartz

We’ve previously covered the end of the hotel minibar. Seems like soon it’ll be impossible to get overpriced food in hotel rooms. Matthew Yglesias reported on the trend of ending hotel room service:

• Despite the high cost of the food, room service is a money losing business for hotels.
• The food itself isn’t always particularly good either since the hotel cooks don’t expect repeat business, and probably don’t have much experience making the dishes.
• In big cities, it’s also becoming pointless since food delivery services like Seamless allow you to order food from a variety of vendors to wherever you’re living.
• Instead of room service hotel staff can be trained to offer unbiased recommendations to better serve guests.
• Almost everybody wins – the hotel saves money, and guests get access to better quality and a wider variety of food. But it does lead to hotels reducing staff levels.

Read more about the hotels that are leading the trend over here.

Source: Slate

The cheapest apartments will cost you about $30 a night. The cheapest hotels cost about $90 a night. Why are hotel rooms so expensive? Matthew Yglesias explained:

• The American tax code treats homeowners favourably; the rationale is that they invest in the community and this should be encouraged.
• Hotel guests, in contrast, do no such thing, and thus hotels are charged sales taxes and hotel occupancy taxes.
• Hotels are generally located on prime real estate and this raises prices.
• When you pay for a hotel you also pay for daily maid service, telephone operators, and concierges.
• Business travelers have expense accounts that they use to pass on the costs to their clients. They don’t really care about costs and this creates demand which drives prices up.
• Finally the headline price that the hotels advertize isn’t necessarily the lowest price available. Instead the same rooms are marketed to lower-income, cost conscious people at bargain rates. Thus hotels only charge high prices to those who are willing to pay.

Read about other quirks of the tax code that make it preferable for business travelers to get higher priced hotels, the money value of time, why Airbnbn might change things, and how hotels sell their unused rooms at low prices over here.

Source: Slate

Room service may be coming to an end but the age of the specialty concierge is upon us writes Catey Hill:

• High end hotels are offering specialized ‘concierges’ or butlers who attend to select requests.
• A bubble bath concierge works with you to select the right combination of salts, oils, and scents to make the perfect 104 degree bubble bath.
• A soap concierge shows up with an assorted variety of giant soap blocks. They include soaps that are made locally and those infused with things such as chocolate and lavender. The concierge will then slice off a piece of your desired soap and give it to you.
• Fragrance butlers show up with a platter of the top perfumes.
• A hangover concierge (or “recovery” concierge) helps you recover from a hangover through massages, fresh fruit, or Bloody Marys.
• A romance concierge helps arrange moonlit beach dinners, and serenaded sunset cruises.

Read more about the types of concierges that hotels are beginning to offer, where you can find them, what they cost, and how much you should tip over here.

Source: MarketWatch

Tim Johnson wrote about a generous program by the Mexican government:

• In a bid to convert the country from analogue TV to digital the government is handing out 10 million free digital televisions to the poor.
• The government has until the end of the year. It’s handing out about 40,000 sets a day but will have to double that if it is to make the deadline.
• The program costs $1.6 billion.
• The televisions being handed out are 24 inch flat screen televisions that cost $145.
• Critics point out that the government could instead just hand out $40 decoder boxes that allow existing analogue televisions to read digital signals.
• The government argues that analogue televisions with decoder boxes require about 350 watts to run, while a flat-screen television only requires 40 watts, making it a program that helps the environment.
• However it has been pointed out that most people will probably just keep both televisions, buying a decoder box for the older one, and perhaps keeping the spare in the children’s room, ultimately increasing energy consumption.
• In addition to smiling masses the program has been a boon to television manufacturers and the media conglomerates that provide digital television services.

Read more about the industry, the shifting competitive landscape, and the manufacturer that lost out because they offered “a better product” over here.

Source: McClatchyDC

Via: Marginal Revolution

Colman Andrews wrote about TastingRoom, a service for the wine drinking generation:

• TastingRoom is like a dating site…but for wine. It uses algorithms to figure out the wine that best suits an individual.
• Users pay $9.95 to get six mini-bottles of wine. They then rate the wine which allows the website to build a profile of the customer’s wine preferences.
• For $59.95 the users can then get a half case of wines tailored specifically to their preferences.

Read more about the service and how it works over here.

Source: The Daily Meal

Hot on the heels of the battle for the best airport, and best airline seat is the battle for the best lounge writes to Scott McCartney:

• On the highest tiers of air travel the differences between airlines are disappearing – they all offer incredible experiences.
• Instead airlines are trying to attract customers by offering premium lounge experiences on the ground.
• At the best lounges you can find concierges who can score theater and dinner reservations in locations across the world.
• In Frankfurt elite passengers are driven to their airplane in luxury cars.
• British Airways’ Concorde Room has museum-quality art and leather seats taken from the now decommissioned Concorde.
• Other lounges offer designer haircuts, iron service while passengers shower, and wine bars.

Read more about what a First Class ticket on an international airline can get you, as well as why domestic air travel in the US is far less glamorous and more over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Indian butlers are the latest trend in imports to the United States writes Jesse McKinley:

• The Pierre hotel on New York’s Fifth Avenue has launched a royal attaché service for guests at the hotel’s 11 Grand Suites.
  • These suites can cost up to $20,000 a night.
• The royal attachés are butlers trained in India where such luxurious treatment is standard fare at high-class hotels.
• The butlers are proficient in various subjects including in-room dining, international customs, fixing shoelaces, drawing baths, cleaning carpets, fixing remotes, and “power dressing”.
• They also have keen observation skills so that they can anticipate “unspoken wishes”.
• The three that have come to the States were selected from a pool of thousands of other candidates. They underwent six months of additional training to prepare for the American market.

Read more about the butlers, the services they offer, why it’s not possible to have a request that is too bizarre, and what they would wish for if somebody was waiting on them, over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution