Originally Posted by
ElevatorEnthusiast
The question here is if it makes business sense to amortize the cost of maintaining parking facilities to all guests via the existing room rate (and not charging a separate parking fee) - so if it actually costs that much to maintain parking facilities, they should just increase the rates (same as other general hotel maintenance). In suburban and rural US properties, it feels relatively safe to assume that greater than 90 percent of rooms will have a car as most people will be driving. At that point, just don’t charge for parking and charge the rate that you need to charge to maintain your facilities, thereby not risking the feeling of your customers “being nickeled and dimed” and not returning. My parents primarily drive places and absolutely pick hotels based on the free parking. In Houston, they will stay at the Westin Galleria because it has free self parking.
I also question the premise of charging for a parking lot when a parking lot is going to be present at a building regardless. If there is no on-site security or additional personnel, the presence of parking isn’t really an amenity with cost and is more of a necessity. In the US (and probably Canada), non-urban buildings come with parking lots.
That being said, I understand parking charges at city hotels and other areas where only a minority of guests will be driving and keeping a car at the property.
Well said. We vote with our wallet and avoid places that are in the middle of 2 interstate that charge for parking. It's not like you have many choices of getting to those places other than driving so I see free parking is a necessity. I agree for big cities it makes sense because you can easily get there by public transport or Uber.
If billdokes thinks car park shouldn't be free, maybe the hotel pool and gym shouldn't be free either - it costs $ to maintain them (especially the pool - as in some states they need to have lifeguard presence so it's even more expensive than managing a car park). Should they put a $3 fee to use either of them? What about breakfast? Should there be a $3 surcharge at all hotels with complimentary breakfast because egg has gotten so expensive in the US?
The problem is that hotels don't have low prices like Ryanair or Easy Jet - $49 for a 90 minutes flight in Europe. You pay for pretty much everything apart from a seat from A to B but then you are paying $29 instead of $129 with a full service airline that still doesn't want to give you a free checked-bag - and if you look at our national carrier SAS you only get coffee and tea and nothing else for intra-Europe flight and Lufthansa is only offering one bottle of water if you are awake. So, the difference in price makes you able to pay for what you need and still come out cheaper than crappy SAS and Lufthansa. If the room rate at a US CY nowadays is $59 and you charge me for parking, fair enough. But when you are talking about $159 and still want to charge me $10 to park in an area that other hotels offer free parking then it makes no sense. All the hotels on that street has free parking except the CY - so they didn't get my business even though the 1000 bonus point can "almost" make up the parking but I stick with my principle and used points to stay at the TPS.
It's my own opinion and no one has to agree with me. I just won't patronize the hotels that I think they are trying to nickel and dime me.