Which is better, to book the cheapest room in a 5-star hotel, or the best suite in a 3-star hotel?

It depends. Would you like to stay in a 5-star a 3-star hotel?

Most of my experience is in mid-market hotels. Even in those we get the occasional bargain hunter you see lots more of at an economy tier property. Hotel room rates can be negotiable, although not nearly as much as some people seem to have the impression. But a lot of people do walk around with that impression, so we end up dealing with quite a few people who want the best room in the house at a 10% discount off what the guy in the cheapest room is paying.

(I let it drive me a little more nuts than I should, but it's a personal pet peeve of mine. When I’m having a bad day, I get onto YouTube and bring up that video of Priceline Negotiator heading off a cliff in that bus, and it makes me feel better. Nonetheless, it does happen.)

So, it is kind of awkward for to have too many 'levels' of quality, amenities, service level, or price within a single hotel, or that much of a spread between them. I might set aside a specific room or suite, that's a little extra nice or that has a nicer view, for someone special if I know ahead of time that they're coming, and put a few extra amenities, maybe a freebie or two, in there. But generally, what you call the “best suite in (the) hotel” isn't that much better than the average suites of the same type. It may be a suite instead of a room, and it may rent for a little more, but neither the price nor the quality will vary by much.

Why are hotels expensive even in developing countries?

Because most hotels  - at least, those built by American or European countries - are built to American or European standards (or, to be fair, the standards that prevail in the world's most advanced nations).

You're not going to go to a developing country and skimp or cut corners or take shortcuts on building codes, building materials, furnishings, or fire codes or fire safety in building a hotel there. If something went wrong, it could go very badly for you, at the very least in terms of public relations. Or, if you furnished it on the cheap or used cheap materials, your property would within a few years stick out as less than your other properties and give your entire group a bad name.  



You'll want to offer the same furnishings and amenities, because that's what your customer base (and without a pretty good idea who the customer base is going to be, I won't even buy or build in the next town, never mind a developing country) counts upon you for and expects to see when they arrive, so you don't want it unraveling.

Also, you're dealing with increased costs: many of the things with which you'll be furnishing your hotel will have to be imported. Luanda, Angola, for one extreme example, has been on several lists of the world's most expensive cities for a few years now. Its economy never quite recovered from a civil war that occurred a few decades ago, so literally everything of value in that country has to be imported: plan on adding shipping and import duties. And now, they've found oil reserves there, creating a supply-and-demand problem on top of that. Meanwhile, the biggest need in that country for a few years to come?  Housing. Plan on exorbitant land and construction costs.

I attempted to answer your question as I understood it (Why don't hotels get any cheaper as the rent and cost of living declines in less developed parts of the world?) I apologize if I did not understand the question correctly and did not give an appropriate answer accordingly. (Why is a hotel expensive by contrast to rent and cost of living, even in developing countries?  It's like that everywhere.)

Originally appeared on Quora

Is it stealing if you take certain items in your already paid-for hotel room like soap, shampoo, stationery, etc?

We expect guests to either use or to take consumable items - soap, shampoo, stationery, etc. You're welcome.

Things like towels, hair dryers, lamps, TVs, TV remotes (I think some guests are mutant aliens who eat TV remotes. Like, gee, the remote can't be counted upon to work with any TV anywhere except the one in the room, but they do travel . . . ), alarm clock radios, comforters, coffeemakers, bedspreads, blankets, etc., are obviously intended for the next guests, are part of the furnishings, and we don't want you taking them. They are also a bit more costly - in a cheap motel, almost as much as you paid for the room in some cases, and definitely more than our profit margin in many more cases - so yes, we go a little nuts when people help themselves to them.

Bathrobes occupy a grey area in the middle. Some hotels provide them as part of the bedding, and want to launder them and hang them for another guest when you check out. On the other hand, in a more upscale property, some people actually assume that they're gifts - with the hotel's blessing. Something like that is a good promotional item, if a little on the pricy side for a midscale hotel: if you did it at all, you'd only do it for your most important customers. I wouldn't provide them in every room to every guest, but a VIP might find a bathrobe monogrammed with the hotel logo left in the room, as a gift. (Not all of them get opened or taken in places where I've seen it done that way.)

Why don't hotel rooms have liquid soap dispensers?

Like this?

It's too high-tech for a hotel. Seriously. 

And it's unsanitary. 

(Are you already starting to not believe a word of this one? . . .)

This past week I've been letting daylight in upon magic and holding us up for ridicule as an industry disinclined to have our technology keep up with the times and modern needs (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Why does it take so long to check in at hotels? ), but oddly enough, this really is too high tech for a hotel. Before you start laughing . . . well, here's why: 

Hotels: How do people choose a hotel?

It's very much an individual decision. There are as many possible answers to this question as there are hotel guests. 

Actually there are more possible answers than there are individuals. Every individual has his priorities, but for each person, one or more secondary factors will be taken into account as well -- many of which will still be significant enough to make a difference in whether or not he wants the room at a particular hotel at all, and any of the others sufficient to prompt him to choose one hotel over another.

If I knew them all, I could retire comfortably in just a few years. (And if I knew, out of fifty-odd numbers, which six will win next week's Powerball jackpot, I could retire even more quickly.)  But I can't. I'm not a mind reader.  Besides, there's seven billion people on the planet, times . . . how many features, and services, and amenities are on your list of 'must have' items when you check into a hotel (as you'll see, they don't have to be big things . . .), times . . . how many possible combinations after you take into account all the other possible things in or about a hotel that you could care less about?  Do the math. It's a big number.

Several factors do turn up over and again, however:

Are hotel reviews more relevant in the buying process than the categorization by hotel stars?

Think of it as the difference between the Emmys and the People's Choice Awards.

The 'stars' are ratings based upon the hotel's service and amenity level - you have to have a free continental breakfast to get this many stars, you have to have a restaurant and lounge to get that many stars, you have to have room service to get one more. Michelin, AAA, and anyone else who awards 'stars' each has their own criteria re how many 'stars' to award for which set of amenities: they're their stars to give, and they make the rules and give them out as they please (Hotel rating ). If I want to develop a new 'four-star hotel', I'm going to make sure I plan ahead for my new hotel to have everything on those lists of requirements for a four-star rating.

The reviews by guests on TripAdvisor are submitted by guests (hopefully real guests, not sales staff - Michael Forrest Jones' answer to What's the best site for getting hotel reviews? ), and based on their experience staying at the hotel.



One surprising example of divergence that we noted in developing our new economy brand (Calico Inns - Beechmont Hotels Corporation ): Red Roof Inn is an existing 'economy' brand. The last one at which I stayed, in Bethlehem, Pa., was a 'two-star' hotel - but it had a TripAdvisor bubble score of 4.0 out of 5.0. (Okay, I helped - Every town needs a 'good, $65.00 motel' . . . - but it still had four bubbles before I posted my own review. If anything, I penalized them: I gave them fives in every relevant category, but took one away on the final score for going "100% non-smoking" and not having a smoking room for me on my last trip.) 

After checking out of a good hotel, what services is it reasonable to expect to use for the remainder of that day? (I checked out of the Park Hyatt today at noon, left my bags and when I retuned to collect them I sat in a reception lounge reading for a bit and I charged my phone. I was told that as I was no longer a guest I shouldn't stay long! Where would be a good place to draw the line as a recent guest and what you can and can't do.)

I can't give you a good answer (at least not in terms of present-day applicability) to that question because frankly, most hotels do not have a policy on that, nor have they ever considered one.  

Someone on the hotel staff might okay it, as a personal accommodation in the spirit of hospitality (which most hotels encourage among their staff - and I will concede based on what you tell me that the staff at the Park Hyatt that you describe was being a bit harsh). But - as you yourself noticed -  that leaves you at the mercy (or whim) of the hotel staff; which can vary not only from hotel to hotel, but between individual managers and staff members within the same hotel.  



A hotel needs to have a policy in place for it, and frankly, most don't. (Unapologetic spam piece: now that I've seen your question, we will.) 

I want to start a resort, how should I get started?

Why would anyone want to come there?

I'm not being a smart a*s: with a resort, that is the first question you have to ask, and its going to come up again and again. (Fortunately, you seem to already have some idea.)



With any hotel project, you locate your hotel near as many demand generators (office parks, interstate highway offramps, theme parks and other tourist attractions, a big regional mall, an airport if you can swing it, etc.), so you still ask that question first.

With a resort, it's all the more important. You're relying upon your location and property itself to be the demand generator (with many resorts, the only demand generator you'll have). Much of the reason people check into your facility is for the unique experience of staying at your facility, itself. So you have to ask that question first, and you have to keep asking it over and again as you're putting it together.

So...

What is my best bet to find nice hotel rooms, as opposed to "simply average" hotel rooms?

Check TripAdvisor. People on TripAdvisor are generally pretty candid about what they think of a hotel and its rooms. And while in the past, it has been criticized for giving inadequate protections to hotels from malicious reviews (by employees of competitors, or people who never stayed at a certain hotel), TripAdvisor now has enough of a critical mass of users, and generally enough safeguards in place against fraud and blackmail, that nowadays, it can be counted upon for a pretty fair description.



I hope you don't find this answer disappointing, that you weren't counting on, say, some inside information that only people in the industry have access to to make such determinations. 

But really - we use TripAdvisor, too (often to 'spy' on each other, see what our competitors have that we need to get, what they are doing that we need to be doing) . . . It also tells us, out of all the stuff we try, what guests actually respond to.

What is the one feature, outside basic necessities like running water, that every hotel room should have?

A bed, some clean bedding, four walls, a floor, a roof, a clean bath, and a locking door. 

And then, the question becomes, do you want to be able to rent the darn thing to human beings that you wouldn't mind having as guests? Because that's what it comes down to: each person measures their own 'need'. Define essential. Whatever item you name, you might feel very uncomfortable without it, even though not that many people feel the need for it. Or you could do without it just fine, but the guy next door will suffer through his stay for lack of it. (Do you actually watch all the channels you have on your cable TV? Yet, even if one of the 'amazing TV offers' channels were eliminated, someone would complain to the cable company.)



We once tried to come up with a hotel with bare-bones amenities, where we could rent the rooms cheap cheap. (Twitter was a new thing, then, and people seemed to like the little blue bird, so inspired by that, and the 'cheap cheap' description, we even came up with a brand for it: 'Bluebird Hotel'.) 

I mean, we were downright shameless and aggressive about it, looking for every way in the book plus a few no book would dare print, to cut costs and make it possible to rent the rooms for forty bucks a night or under.

Why in every hotel in U.S. there is a Bible in each guest room?

In most hotels, the Gideons supply them. This is an interdenominational Christian organization that exists to get the Bible into the hands of as many people as possible. So, they print up lots and lots of cheap ones, and give them out as gift items. (The next time you're in a hotel, steal it. It's okay. You won't burn in hell. They actually want you to.) 

Out of that commitment, when I was a kid in grade school in the '60's, they also used to come around and give a little New Testament to each of the kids: needless to say, they had to cut that out after some people protested to the school districts about the implied breakdown of 'separation of church and state' in the public schools and messed it up for everybody, even the kids who liked getting the little New Testament every year or two.

The Gideons are a pretty large, widespread organization, so having a Bible in every hotel room is pretty much a norm, but it's their doing, not that of most hotel owners or managers. Many of those wouldn't bother, unless a franchise requires it, although nearly all permit the Gideons to do so. 

The Bibles do see their share of misuse. For years, back in the past, scribbled into a nightstand Gideon Bible was the unspoken, usually-agreed-upon place where the local call girls left their name and number, and the men who would book them would know to look for it. We had a convention of Jehovah's Witnesses one weekend, and a man brought one to the desk to turn in that had quite a few blasphemous scrawlings and Satanic symbols drawn into the inside cover pages -- apparently someone had sat up in that room one night getting pretty bored. So we do have to have the housekeepers check them from time to time.