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The Great Minibar Markup
The Travel Critic · February 16, 1998

Hotels know you crave pretzels or bottled mineral water after a long trip, and they're capitalizing on it like never before.

Last week, I found a minibar menu hidden between the television and VCR in my hotel room, and I got a good laugh from it. A candy bar cost $4.50. Cashews were $7.50 per package and macadamia nuts a mind-blowing $9.50.

That's more than a 300 percent higher than the retail price. Considering only 9 percent of corporate travel policies reimburse minibar expenses, according to Runzheimer International, the munchies could really put the crunch on your pocketbook.

You probably were already aware of the exorbitant markup, but did you know to what lengths hotels are going to make sure their minibars are profit centers? The latest models use infrared eyes to detect any movement in the square refrigerator. At the Noga Hilton in Cannes, France, remove any item for more than 10 seconds and-voila!-your room is automatically billed for the snack food.

No more questions like, "Did you have anything from the minibar?" at check-out time. They know.

According to the American Hotel & Motel Association, manufacturers also offer minibars that let the hotel staff detect an open refrigerator door from a remote hand-held device. I can imagine the minibar cops roaming the hallways with a monitor, literally tracking snack attacks.

While it's true that only 11 percent of hotel rooms in the United States come with a minibar, it goes without saying that rip-off refrigerators are pretty much standard in corporate travel accommodations. Executive suites are peppered with expensive minibars.

We are weak, the hotels figure. We've been eating bad airline food all day and are too tired to even pick up a phone to order pizza. And so they roll out bigger, better, booby-trapped minibars. The new ones aren't just stocked with water, juice, candy, cookies and half-bottles of wine. They also come with convenience store items like toothbrushes and shaving kits.

Make no mistake, minibars earn big bucks for the property. According to a recent trade publication report, the profit margin on a minibar is about 35 percent. That means even after the hotel has paid for the snack food and labor needed to restock the refrigerator, they're still making a killing.

Of course, a top-of-the-line minibar costs about $1,800. But that's a small price to pay for the handsome returns a hotel is sure to get from hungry travelers.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.