I just finished reading an article on BBC News that The Rancho Bernardo Inn, a “Luxury Resort” here in the United States was offering rooms that usually start at $219 for as low as $19 a night. I understand that part. That’s actually a damm good deal. It’s this next part that I don’t understand.

The room starts at $219, but the resort will then reduce the price of the room for each amenity you don’t want in the room.

The cheapest deal – $19 – means guests sacrifice a bed, breakfast, air-conditioning, towels, toilet paper, a mini-bar and lighting.

Staff will even unscrew the headboard from the wall – but leave a small tent.

Wait, did I read that right? They even take out the toilet paper (a roll costs less than $0.50. Probably much less when they buy it wholesale).

General manager John Gates said that during tough economic times it was a way to help people stay at a nice resort who normally could not afford to.

So you take everything nice out of the room so its worse than a 2 start dump (last I checked even 2 star motels gave you toilet paper) and think your giving people a way of saying at a “NICE RESORT“?

What makes even less economic sense is that your room is going empty anyway. So instead of letting someone stay there at $19 with full comfort (which might actually convince the person to come back and pay full price) you increase your overheads by getting your staff to strip the room on a per client basis, so they can stay in a TENT IN AN EMPTY ROOM with NO toilet paper and expect them to come back and pay full price next time???

DUDE, WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?

Source: BBC News.

I mean seriously…. Who priced this flight. For those who are not familiare with the geography of this area, you can drive from Sacramento to San Francisco in under an hour.

I miss flying airlines like Malaysian, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Sri Lankan Airlines and the like where you actually looked forward to the food and its FREE. Virgin Atlantic now flies domestic routes in the US under the local brand of Virgin America and they provide you a nice free meal and snacks for local domestic flights while still being competitive with the other US airlines, so why cant they?

so what have a learn from all this?

1. the police here love to browse the latest CD’s at the music store. every hour or so two police officers passing by will pop in and spend about 15 minutes or so browsing though the shelves and then leave without purchasing anything. they also like checking out the latest gadgets at Dixons (an electronics store) right next door.

2. Michael Jackson is very much alive in this part of the world. i’ve listened to the store play a marathon of his hits at least 3 times over with a speckling of some rap songs here and there. took me down memory lane as well. you do not realize just how many songs jackson has. more so, how many of them are number one hits. enough hits to play for hours it seems. quite an accomplishment for any artist.

3. it’s quite common to see 5 year old girls wearing purple velvet dresses with fancy pea coats walking around with their mums who are equally peacocked out themselves.

4. the word “Gentleman” is still pretty much part of the English vocabulary and is very much used in everyday chatter here. eg: talking on the walkie talkie “Can you hold the gate a few more minutes? I just passed another gentleman heading over to catch his flight” (Said with a thick british accent)

5. the Audi a8 is one sexy beast of a car.

6. there are as many airport staff talking in Hindi as there as talking in English.

7. i’ve hardly seen any obese people the whole time i’ve been here.

8. kids wearing those jeans that look like they are going to fall off at any moment actually look fitted for some reason. (they still look like they are going to fall off at any moment)

9. the older gents are much more adventurous with their mustaches. i saw some that were just plain CRAZY…

10. i have yet to see an overweight air hostess walk pass me.