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.
So what you are saying is that you understand that there is a cost to have and maintain a parking facility, but it's only ok for Hotels to charge for it separately under certain circumstances?
There are all kinds of good business reasons for Hotel owners to un-bundle their charges and I expect we will see more and more of that...whether it be to match revenues to costs, to avoid giving points on ancillary charges, or to be able to post a lower nightly room rate on the plethora of websites that offer their product in order to snag a reservation from another property or protect one that would have gone to a competitor because of how that competitor chooses to price
their product.
I don't get the argument that parking (or anything) should be free just because the location is suburban or 'located between 2 Interstates'. It probably should be lower than what is charged in the middle of a big city, but I don't have any issue with the notion that something that has a cost and a value should have a corresponding price.
If you don't like it, stay somewhere else, nobody is holding a gun to your head to stay at a particular property if you don't like the price or how that price is presented.