Why do hotel mini bars have to go the way of the Dodo bird?

One of the advantages of having stayed in hotels for many years is that I have seen various changes within the sector, one of which, sadly, is the demise of the mini bar.

I used to roll up at a hotel and open the mini bar fridge with a hopeful expression on my face. Unfortunately, I was always disappointed when I saw the price of a half bottle of an unknown brand of red wine. Why was I being asked to mortgage my house to pay for it? Okay, a slight exaggeration there, but I am sure you get my point.??

Hotels have typically treated their mini bars as profit centres, like they do with many of the services and facilities they offer. With many guests refusing to pay their exorbitant prices, they have decided the extra staff time required to service them wasn't cost effective, so they have removed them. Mini bars are becoming like the Dodo bird - extinct.??

Hotel operators will tell you it's because people prefer to go to a convenience store and buy their drinks there. At typical mini bar prices, of course they do!

They will also tell you that they are difficult to service and despite their removal people are still staying at their hotels?- a clear sign they are not needed by the guests. They are certainly not needed when they are so expensive.

We accept that mini bars take time to service and a cost is incurred in doing so. They can also lead to disputes with the occasional guest. We also accept that operators have to charge competitive room rates and want to maximise their profit.? Sadly, a common view point is that if they can't make a profit out of them then they should be removed. Welcome to the hotel industry!?

All operators pay their house-keeping teams to clean their apartments/rooms and the cost is covered by the room rates they charge. Why can't mini bars be viewed as a guest service with lower prices resulting in a break-even position or at worst, an added house-keeping expense?? Surely the emphasis should be on providing a first-class experience for the guests.

So we asked ourselves, how important is it that our guests enjoy their stay with us? Would a correctly priced, break-even mini bar increase the chances of us achieving that?

We reasoned that whilst few people would stay with us because we had a mini bar, few would object to having one in the apartment. There was no downside, and all upside, with us having them in our aparthotels.

Accordingly, we have installed 'non-profit' mini bars in The Old Lyric Hall, our new aparthotel. We charge prices that in line with local convenience stores. Our guests don't have to go in search of a store and won't feel they are being exploited. It's all part of 'Delivering the promise' of a first-class service and, where we can, satisfying our guests' wishes.

I can hear some operators saying, 'That is naive, he doesn't know what he is doing' and even a few saying 'But we need to get every drop of blood out of our victims, sorry, money out of our guests... ' (Apologies if that is a little too graphic).

In fairness, there are lots of aparthotel operators out there and it is not fair for us to criticise how some of them operate. Each to his own and if it works for them then all well and good.

Importantly, we are comfortable with our approach and believe it benefits us and our guests. So, if you stay in one of our aparthotels, can we interest you in a competitively priced item from the mini bar? The good thing is - you can decide when you are there.