Originally Posted by
mikebor
Again to me it reeks of hidden discrimination. They don't want low income people(and a lot of other adjectives) staying there as it would bring down the reputation of the property. So these hotels would rather have a 2% occupancy at a $159 rate than a 10-15% occupancy at a $69 rate because of the different kind of people who would stay there smh. Unbelievable this goes on in 2020.
It's not hidden, it's right out in the open, and all businesses do it. And it's actually the opposite of price discrimination. It's not reputation they're worried about, it's profit. It "goes on" in 2020, always has, and always will.
Price discrimination is the practice of charging different customers different rates, based on how much they could pay, usually without their knowledge. For example, if I'm selling widgets and customer A is willing to pay $10 per widget and customer B is only willing to pay $8, I will charge $10 and $8 respectively. This is NOT what Marriott is doing...they're charging everyone $10 and the consumer can decide if they want to purchase at that price. So technically, by having a fixed price, they're NOT discriminating against anyone, they're just offering a product for a set price. No company sets product price for all customers based on what they think their lowest-income potential customer can afford.
When you buy a cheeseburger at McDonald's, there's a set price and you decide if you want to pay it or not. When you buy a car at a dealership, the salesperson in most cases practices price discrimination, based on how much they think you are likely to be able to spend.