osmantrex

Are there really going to be many (any?) people staying here who aren't going to have free breakfast? The cash rates seem to almost all include breakfast, and as for points you're either going to have accumulated them via stays and will have status that way will or be accumulating them through a cobranded credit card and so should have status that way.

It's not like Marriott or Hyatt where free breakfast is only given to higher elite statuses- in a lot of jurisdictions you can get Hilton Gold pretty easily. Hell, if you can't get an Amex Platinum where you live you could pay $395 for a FoundersCard membership which would give you Hilton Gold.

Traveler Dave

I think Tilly hit the nail on the head here. I presume the target market for this resort is going to attract Gold/Diamond Hilton members. Either via organic stays, credit card status or status match from other loyalty programs. Rather they paid for the stay in cash or points will be irrelevant. But in short, 98% of the people staying here are going to be getting/excepting the free buffet breakfast. The 2% of people not in that bucket have more money than sense. So it does not matter to those customers what they charge for 2 eggs and toast. With all that the WA is putting together for this opening, a huge breakfast menu, no one is going to order from seems like a big waste of energy.

TD

Traveler Dave

Agree with Rizla. I consider myself fortunate that I can stay at a $1400++ night hotel for FREE for 9 days. I understand the food and transportation costs are a little crazy. But I have seen similar prices elsewhere. The service/execution/quality will determine if they are justified against their competition. I am presuming they will.

TD

mb123

Traveler Dave

Just one persons perspective on the transportation cost to the WA Maldives....I think Hilton missed a great opportunity here.

To quote Chevy Chase from SNL....I was told there would be no math....but please bear with me.....They are charging $350++ each way per person. So $700++ round trip per person or $1400++ for a couple staying at the resort. I have to presume most guests are staying at least a week, given all the cost and overall efforts to get to the Maldives. If they had just rolled some of the transportation cost in to the room cost I don't think people would have blinked an eye. I doubt many people would be complaining about a room cost being $1500++ VS, $1400++.

If they had done that the transportation cost could have been $350++ round trip or $700++ per couple staying 7 days. That would have put them in the lower tier, cost-wise, for transportation costs. Opportunity lost.

Now I realize this is simplifying all the variables. There are some that will not stay that many days, but many will stay more. I realize there will be groups with more than two, but a transfer is a transfer. Assuming they don't need another boat for one pickup/drop off run. More people wont add to the cost. In general all transports would average out.

TD

hugolover

We don't know what their sales team are up-to. They could be bundling this with inclusive tour packages. Apart from the points market we care about, there's still a big package market to the Maldives for once in a lifetime Honeymooners who book via TA.

When sold in Europe by agencies (and even scrapers) you have to display the total cost and WA will look way out of kilter if thats not spread across the rate, or bundled somehow.

osmantrex

Dollars to donuts a lot of the traffic at this hotel that isn't driven by Hilton loyalty (and so will get slammed with these transfer fees if they don't find an alternative) is going to involve bundled packages that will be rolling the transfer costs into the rate (along with a "one category upgrade", one included spa treatment, breakfast, $x in F&B credit per day, etc).

And for someone staying here on points, the higher transfer cost could be more of a bug than a feature feature than a bug: if you only have a dozen or so rooms that can be booked on points and you're expecting those to get snapped up pretty regularly, it makes sense that you'd want those rooms filled with less price-conscious travelers (read: not cheapskates like me). If the hotel scares those people away with a higher transfer cost and fills the rooms anyway, they're going to have those rooms filled with people who are likely going to spend more money at the hotel.

Of course if the hotel is having trouble filling those points rooms, or if 75% of those people are going to use alternate transfer options, that argument breaks down a bit.

MaldivesFreak

Nearly thirty six bucks for an egg. It makes you wanna puke (the egg back up after you've swallowed it and then found out how much it costs, LOL). Admittedly it comes with a couple of baby tomatoes, tiny chicken sausage, one hash brown and a strip of beef or pork bacon but yeah, it's still a rip.
The point here is not whether they will have 1 or 2 or 3% of people ordering and actually paying for them, it's the attitude of management and their over-inflated prices that's the problem. I mean honestly, are they stupid enough to believe that with such few guests paying cash for breakfasts, they need to hike the prices to make money on those few extra breakfast eggs? Obviously not. Or you'd think not. So what's the point of pricing it in such a way? The only thing it will do, long term, is piss a lot of people off enough to say "Screw you, I'll go somewhere else!" or "That's laughable. You can charge someone else that for your damn eggs. You aren't getting any of my hard-earned cash!" On the other hand, if they had reasonable or reasonable-to-high prices on their menus people would actually appreciate the fact that the pricing wasn't extortionate, and that goes a long way to brand and property loyalty. It just shows you what I said before is most likely the case - that there are idiots with little common sense in charge of pricing. So stupid in fact that they don't understand basic human nature. Pencil-pushing rich that think the world revolves around them. They think their new resort is some kind of super cash-magnet that will pull in rolls and rolls of greenbacks without reservation or restriction.

Come on, @Land-of-Miles. What's wrong with people expressing themselves and having a bit of fun while they're at it? Those few posts about the price of that wine were a damn good laugh.

As far as admonishing a property goes, there's nothing at all wrong with it. If they act like they're trying to blatantly rip people off, take the pees at all the 'suckers' that they think are going to be paying these ridiculous prices and be laughing all the way to the bank behind everyone's back, then they're fair game. You reap what you sow. Let's take what happened with the St. Regis as an example when they took their 4 base villas that were available for redemption out of available inventory, re-branded them as 'breakfast-inclusive package deals' and then went on and lied about that availability to potential guests. They got bashed on the forum fair n square and they deserved it. That kind of behaviour is what you'd expect of a 2-star dump in any number of seedy places on the planet. And as for the WA's behaviour and price gouging; the extortionate Xmas & NYE gay-lala fees, $35 eggs and all that jazz - their pricing strategy needs to be taken apart with a fine tooth comb and be made available for all those who wish to see it. If no-one does it it would indeed be a shame. The more opinions the better. Whatever super-rich target market they are after, the reality is they are going to attract a ton of Hilton elites (see paragraph above) who will burn hundreds of thousands of points but not have hundreds of thousands in cash to burn on F&B. They can dream all they want about fleecing rich Arabs but the fact of the matter is they're in a major hotel chain and they're not going to fill the majority of the resort with them, 365 days a year, no matter how bouyant the travel industry is. Yeah sure, for those of us who don't like their pricing we can choose to go or not to go, to sit or not to sit in a bird cage on a telephone pole and eat a meal with our SO and pay $1000 for it, or to eat those $35 breakfast eggs.....or not, but in the end we here are paying with our hard-earned cash and we're damn well entitled to talk about it the way we see fit and we shouldn't be criticized for it. (don't take that personally, it's just me being vocal as usual)

Think about it this way. How about if they priced their transfers reasonably, acted with complete sincerity - apologized properly and didn't backtrack and make excuses about why the 'wrong info' was on their website - treating guests like 5 year olds with their "technical glitch" BS excuse (god that's pathetic) and not try to do the dirty on those who had confirmed return prices by changing them to one-way after the fact. They could have priced everything else reasonably too. Expensive maybe, but not over the top. They could have made a concerted effort to look sincere and respectable in the travelling public's eye, to make sure that practically no-one would get the feeling that they were purely out to fleece guests and that no negativity and peestaking on forums like this ever happened. Easily done. But they didn't. Attitude is everything and for most people, a bad attitude or blatant greed on the part of someone who is taking your money - supposedly gracefully - leaves a very bad taste in the mouth. I totally understand those who feel they want to change properties and know how that the attitude of management and / or a hotel chain can completely ruin a holiday, well before it has even started. Remember: we are paying customers. Like quite a few members have already said from way back in this thread, after becoming more and more aware of how they are price-gouging, they are considering going elsewhere. Good on them. Vote with your wallet. After all, everyone is entitled to spend their money the way they want and choose not to get fleeced because, yes, there are other, more reasonable properties out there - properties whose number one priority isn't to make as much money in a short a time as possible with artificially high prices and attitude to match. In the end, information like we see on the forum here, makes better, and usually more comfortable, choices.

gallagher

[QUOTE=MaldivesFreak;31259290]Yeah, my bad I suppose. You said Feb 1 and I thought those charges had been on your bill at checkout somewhere else in the country. Did you pre-pay those costs on your points booking or they are showing on your reservation details / confirmation email?

Just checked my confirmation email - 960,000 HH points + USD120

MaldivesFreak

Remember: it is not free! It's nice to think that but it just isn't true. Whether you like it or not, those points have been earned. A free stay would be someone else gifting you their points, otherwise you have paid for them in some way.

Not necessarily. There are those who will have lost status or are on gifted stays or friends of Golds and Diamonds in 2nd and 3rd rooms and the like. They will be involuntarily paying through the teeth for their breakfast.


Right.

This will be hard to accomplish because with upgrade rates to most of the resort's other rooms of only $200++ and $400++, you'll have a lot of Golds and Diamonds spending their cash on upgrading from their points bookings, freeing up those base villas to more points bookings. Then, as I mentioned before, you'll have the resort upgrading Elites (cash Golds and Diamonds primarily) and returning guests into higher category rooms, freeing up even more base rooms to points bookings. I think it will be very easy for them to have a good occupancy rate (and lots of people wanting to avoid the inflated F&B prices at every turn), just not from Arab oil.....

MaldivesFreak

That will be a very tricky stunt to pull off, especially in the first 9 months or a year. For starters you'll have wait staff forgetting teas & coffees, screwing up orders and the like and hosts screwing up reservations and whatnot and there will be holes in the service everywhere. This will be commonplace just like it is with new resorts everywhere. Let's just hope there are fewer than normal.

Traveler Dave

I can appreciate my approach to the true cost of acquiring miles and vouchers may be different than most, but I do consider most of my points and voucher nights close to "free" to acquire.

I get four weekend night vouchers a year by spending $15K per year on each of those credit cards. This is from business spend I would make with or without being in the points game. The annual cost of those four cards is $380.00. So that clearly is a cost. My wife and I also have the $450 annual Hilton card. With the $250 resort credit and $250 airfare credit on both cards I am "making" $100 on both of those cards and earn us two more nights. So now down to $280 out of pocket for six free nights vouchers and around 360K Hilton points from the non-Hilton credit card spend (averaging 6x per $ spent - food, gas, grocery, shipping) . If I am able to put any Hilton spend (12x per $) on the cards annually, and I do, the miles earned is over 400K.

Last year I had nine days at the Conrad Bora Bora using the previous years points and vouchers. This year I am staying nine days at the WA Maldives. In effect for $280 per trip. That is about as close to free as you can get in my book

The argument could be made that had I used a cash back card (around 2% generally) I would have $1200 from the money I put on the Hilton cards. For me an un-realized savings is not a cost and good luck getting nine nights in Miami for $1200 much less BB or the Maldives.

TD

Traveler Dave

This is also commonplace in resorts that have been open for years in my experience.

TD

Traveler Dave

I will go out on a limb and guess that not one person will ever stay at the WA Maldives involuntarily. To quote the movie Airplane...."they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into. I say, let 'em crash".

I bought my tickets eyes wide open and know we will have a fabulous time....albeit spendy....

TD

htran88

it should have also been a hint that this property was the highest redemption for ANY hilton branded hotel in the world. it was only foreshadowing the highest priced poached egg in the world. either way, i gladly bent over and accepted it