Why are hotels getting so fucking expensive in some really blah places?

I agree with you OP, hotels across the board have gotten surprisingly expensive.

Personally I use airbnb whenever I can now.

Totally agree OP. SF is the worst for outrageous pricing for old product and then they nickel and dime you for extras.

OP, Madison is a cool town. You sound like a snob.

i cant f'ing believe how high things are getting. all i can say if f that

Because that is what it costs now.

Just because you got some crap minimum wage job don't think that is the norm.

I think it comically laughable when people say NYC and SF are too costly yet the population keeps going up and up. Obviously people can afford to live there and they keep moving in, driving up rents and the landlords get them.

Stop painting the world with your personal issues. If you can't afford something, get a better job.

My partner has to go to Pittsburgh in October and the hotels are $200 plus downtown.

By the way, how was that dinner on Central Park South with Ted Cruz, r5?

Many have pushed check in time back to 4:00.

You have to beg them to change the sheets and towels.

They nickel and dime you for everything.

Time to change out your tampon r5. Remember doll, they weren't designed for a whole week.

R5 signifies all that is wrong with this country.

It would be nice if all we needed to solve our problems was simply go get a better job.

There would be nobody working retail, at restaurants, hourly wage jobs, or dead end jobs, we would all just go get better jobs.

Simple, problem solved. R5 has solved the problem, this thread is now closed.

Yes R5, the wealthy keeps getting wealthier. However for everyone that is not in the top 2% of incomes it is harder to get by in this country and our income inequality keeps getting worse.

The economy has greatly improved, business is booming, ppl are traveling much for work & for pleasure.

It's the same reason why airfares keep climbing despite oil prices having dropped about 50% in the last 18 months.

I'm sure you've also noticed that decent restaurants are more expensive too.

It's called "supply & demand".

R3, I love Madison, but there is no hotel there worth over 300 dollars. There simply is not any space worth that amount.

And yet Madison charges that much even at the shitty, awful Best Western on Capital Square.

[quote] Just because you got some crap minimum wage job don't think that is the norm.

R5, please sit on a tetanus covered, iron spike dildo. And spin. I hardly work a minimum wage job.

Also? I am happy to splurge and pay a premium *when the hotel and/or surroundings merit such a premium.* Midgrade, twenty year old hotels with moldy carpets and outdated furnishings are NOT among the places that merit such a markup.

The bedbugs unionized

[quote]Because that is what it costs now.

And, in all honesty, it doesn't even cost as much as drama queen OP is making out. Even a cursory glance at hotels.com or Expedia shows that there are decent, if not the best, hotels in Indy, Madison, Pittsburgh that cost far less than the alleged inescapable $300-400 that OP claims.

Travel & demand continues to increase. It's been going up slowly for the last several years.

I wonder, also, if they avoided building new properties after 2008...and now it's catching up.

What's weird to me is that prices in Europe haven't dropped at all...and the Euro is down considerably. So, even if you price a hotel room in Euros and then convert it, it's still $300 in dollars...which is what it always was. So, Europeans are really paying outrageous prices.

Have you ever heard of a thing called "supply and demand"? If there are not enough hotels, and enough people willing to pay higher prices, that's what happens. It's what the market will bear.

If there are too many hotels, either prices will go down or one or more of the hotels will go under.

Also, hotel pricing varies drastically based on season and local events (conventions, festivals, etc.) that create more demand.

Most hotels in Madison are under $100. One hotel charges $300 one or two weeks in June during graduation.

In general, what's happened is that people no longer travel for business, BUT....

People do travel to LOBBY politicians,with apparently unlimited expense accounts; and rich people do medical tourism; and rich people dominate the household travel market, so university towns and places where rich people congregate occasionally will have high rates.

In general places like Indianapolis have low demand so when there is a big event (sports or a convention) they fill up quickly and charge more. One time I arrived at Indy during an NFL game and I had to drive right on through as there wasn't a hotel with vacancies within 60 miles.

Because people are willing to it.

When travel stops, hotel prices collapse.

r19 is correct about events. I went to Atlantic City to see Madonna (I know, I know) and the prices were INSANE. You couldn't get a room in any hotel or even motel for under $300. Normally the prices there are not too bad.

Despite r12's obvious pride in his freshly washed truncated penis, it is important to remember that this "recovery" is all about printed money and the reason hotel rooms that cost $200/night now top $400 is because of all the superfluous paper dollars.

I've stayed at the BW on the Capitol Square in Madison many times and it's hardly 'shitty' or 'awful'. And nowhere near $300 unless there's some huge event going on. Just checked the price for the UW graduation weekend in June (which is one of the larger events in town) and it's $179 for a one queen bed room; pretty reasonable in my opinion.

I travel a lot OP and really have not seen prices rise.

You likely hit those smaller towns when there was an event in town and rooms were scarce. I've seen that too - DoubleTrees charging $300+ because they were the only places with rooms available and all the better hotels were booked. But that's a once a year thing, not SOP.

The biggest culprits on the nickel and diming are hotels that are in resort areas and host big conventions. They know that the business travelers will put up with the $20 "resort fee" to use the gym and $15/day WiFi so they just pile that on.

Give OP Greek he's going through some financial hard times ever since his escort started charging him by the pound

[quote]Give OP Greek

Sorry--oral only here.

Isn't business travel deductible? Just another subsidy for the corporatocracy, which artificially inflates rates for everyone.

Gotta love all these "econ 101" simpletons who squawk "supply and demand!" Apparently, they never made it to econ 201.

Business travel is a business expense.

Anyone who thinks businesses don't care about travel expenses has never worked for a corporation with a travel department.

What businesses DO pay for is flexibility. Being able to change plans AND get a full refund if the trip is cancelled.

Travel plans change constantly with businesses.

Who said businesses don't care about travel expenses, r28? The main thing they do care about is money. Are you one of those econ 101 tools?

R28 is right and the government works the same way. If you can schedule your own travel ahead of time and turn in vouchers, it may be less.

Stop stealing their towels and prices won't keep rising so high.

What pisses me off is hotels who claim to have this "green" option when you check in.

At first it was just an option to not get clean sheets and towels every day. Which is fine with me. When I travel for work I'm not doing anything which requires clean sheets or towels every day. Someone still came in made the bed, vacuumed, emptied cash etc...

But now it is housekeeping every three days. Nothing green about that. Considering what I'm paying - they can make my bed and empty the trash.

Or do better than a 10% discount at the Starbucks in the lobby.

hmm I find this hard to believe. You can rent a nice hotel in downtown Chicago for $300. Often less. Chicago is a much more expensive city than any of the ones you listed. I find it difficult to believe shit in Madison, WI costs more than notoriously expensive Chicago.

I did notice an uptick in hotel rooms prices in Pittsburgh last week. It was about $243 for the Omni, excluding tax, parking, breakfast, WiFi. So I ended up at a Hampton. Usually Hamptons are clean, but this one was not. And I paid a 14.95/day parking charge. It was irritating.

In Madison, I stayed at the Concourse and like it well enough, but found the wall-through a/c very noisy.

I like Pittsburgh and Madison a lot, though, for different reasons.

One reason For expensive hotels right now may be seasonal travelers, heading home for spring.

R22 & HER comment about a truncated penis is the dead giveaway of a bleeding gash frau who failed Econ 101

If "supply & demand" isn't the cause, brainiac, then please, do inform the rest of us as to what you think it is.

I'm a travel agent. I used to have little trouble taking the train to New York for the weekend and finding a reasonably-priced room for a couple of nights and afford dinner and a show. It was also possible to fly to San Francisco or Ft. Lauderdale for the weekend. But not any longer. The hotels have gone to the airlines method of pricing. Now it's not unheard of to see hotel rates in bigger cities climb over the 400+, 600+, range. The only people buying those rates have so much money, it is like pocket change for them. I'm hoping Air Bnb does something to these astronomic rates. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, all of Europe, are just out of reach. Even on Manhattan the Comfort Inns and the Best Westerns and Holiday Inns are playing this 300+ per night game. The average man is priced out unless he paying on someone else's dime, and that's the root of the problem. I don't think the maids are making 60K a year.

Priceline has gotten me many at about 50 bucks a night, 3 and 4 star, major cities, great locations.

Boston is expensive for hotels

R33 I *live* in Chicago and that's what puzzles me. I arrange hotels here for both friends/family and business reasons and it's almost never over $200, and often cheaper.

AND the hotels are nicer.

I think Chicago has more hotels and therefore there are more pockets of cheap hotels that show up on sites like Hotwire, but even day rates on the hotel's own websites have seldomly consistently been over $250 for me, unless there's an obvious big event (conference, Lollapalooza) and it's rare to have something that would so take over the entire city.

I guess smaller cities feel the impact more.

Soon it will just be cheaper to book a rentboy for an in-call for a night.

R39 / OP - I think we have established your information on hotel room prices is just wrong.

R41 No, but thanks for playing.

I've been lucky at finding stuff on Hotwire and Trivago in Chicago and in a lot of other larger cities, but the midsized ones are less flexible.

It must be that $15 an hour minimum wage they been forced to pay their employees.

Oh, wait a minute. Well, don't blame the chambermaid.

Buck Winston, the chambermaid's delight!

[quote]I'm a travel agent.

That's that?

Stay at a bathhouse Mary, and you will never pay $100.

Not OP. But as someone who loves Madison and thinks it's very cool I also find it hard to believe that there are hotels there charging $300 a night.

Motel 6 is keeping the light on for you.

Career hotel person (ret) here. The rule of thumb for room rates was if a hotel cost $125,000 per room to build/buy, you need to charge $125 a night to break even.

You've seen the numbers. Building and buying hotels cost crazy money, but they are getting the room rates. HOW they get away with it .. I can not explain. Makes no fucking sense to me either.

As long as there are people stupid enough or with more money than brains prices on everything will be much higher than they should be. If no one would pay so much things wouldn't cost as much.

R43

Not long after Sea-Tac, WA (where Seattle Airport is located) voted in their $15/hr wage, the Crowne Plaza slapped on a $3/night/room "surcharge" as an offset. Doing so meant that they don't have to give hotel points for it, which they would if they incorporated the extra cost into their room rates, sneaky cheap bastids they!

I don't so much mind the maids, breakfast staff, maintenance, etc. getting more, but the desk clerks have a fairly routine job for a 50% increase!

[quote]I did notice an uptick in hotel rooms prices in Pittsburgh last week. It was about $243 for the Omni, excluding tax, parking, breakfast, WiFi.

I stayed there last fall — about $180/night on Hotwire... which was more expensive than my last trip to Chicago and the one I booked for May.

The Omni in Pittsburgh is a beautiful early-20th century pile with some beautiful architecture, but the rooms are just OK, while rooms in Chicago tend to be up-to-date.

Bigger cities always seem to have a deal here and there because of the sheer number of hotels, it seems. But these days you have to work Hotwire or Priceline to save any money anywhere.

[quote]My partner has to go to Pittsburgh in October and the hotels are $200 plus downtown.

He's going to...Pittsburgh...in OCTOBER...and already you both know the hotel rates?

Anything else to look forward to this year?

San Diego isn't "blah" really, but it's not like a major tourist destination (aside from comicon and stuff like that) - still, finding a hotel under 300 with tax was very hard. I just gave in and spent the money...though I admit I didn't look under 3 stars, but still - I am used to 200-350 for 4+ stars at most places. Apparently, SD is a notoriously difficult city for hotels - there just aren't enough rooms. The omni i stayed at was about 300 but LOUD all night too. I would've had a better nights sleep for $80 across the border in tijuana.

Air bnb is the way to go. I don't know why anyone would prefer these overpriced, mediocre hotels.

You need to get a real job and stop working at Starbucks. A real job after college will get you at least 50K (Unless you pick an asshole degree like Liberal Arts or Art History or such) and you could afford it.

Hotels charge what the market will bear and just because you're poor don't cast your poor life choices on others.

Of course I'm talking to the wall as if you had any sense you'd be back in school, not wasting time on a gay message board.

The hotels are empty and they raised their rates bc they'll will get it from business, for business travel. A

Weston last week in San Francisco for $98 per night.

Screw your airbnb

R56= Steve Mnuchin

What are you talking about? Right now I see 4 star hotels listed at $119. In Madison

San Diego 5 star hotel The Us Grant listed at $199 in booking.com

[quote]Madison WI too. I mean, it's fucking Wisconsin. A bland ass hotel

as opposed to a cute buns hotel, I guess.

R56 is clearly projecting his own life. Simmer down.

[quote]I think it comically laughable when people say NYC and SF are too costly yet the population keeps going up and up.

This post from 2015 did not age well. White flight from California is turning into a flood and even NY landlords are lowering their rents.

Is it because the airline industry has made flying so nice and so convenient that we now more frequently go to the "blah places?"

Get Amex Platinum, OP. Third night free. Luxury hotels are actually a good value, given their general cleanliness, safety, good gyms, decreased headaches, fewer snags.