I was somewhat excited about an upcoming trip to Boston. Then I started researching hotel prices.
Check this out:
1 night in a generic hotel in Boston = $210
Now contrast that to these (bear in mind that I generally travel just slightly off the peak seasons, but not much):
1 night in a British Bristol freighter airplane turned into a hotel in New Zealand: $160 Nz, roughly $85 US
1 night in a two-room suite with kitchenette in Queenstown, NZ: $150 NZ
1 night at La Mansion, a spectacular hotel in the jungles near Manuel San Antonio, Costa Rica: $150-$350 US (FYI, this place is super-deluxe. Ex-presidents stay here. It is not a (long string of expletives deleted) Best Western or Holiday Inn.
1 night in a slick backpacker’s lodge in Tongariro National Park, NZ: $40 NZ (call it $25 US)
1 night in a super-awesome eco-lodge in the rain forest of Belize: $85-$105
1 night in a sleek, modern, convenient hotel steps from downtown Cairns, Australia: $115 AU (call that about $85 US).
Seriously, are American hotels trying to price themselves out of consideration? If so, they’re doing a grade-A job of it. Factor in the fact that, to reach most foreign destination, I have to fly a foreign airline with better service and that I LOVE long flights, and you can see that American hotels will get my dollars only when family obligations require travel within this country’s borders.
If you’re a traveler, vote with your wallet. Take your dollars off-shore. Maybe that will get the message through.
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They say Japan’s expensive, but I found a place to stay for under $60/night in 2003. The room was tiny, but had its own tiny bathroom and shower, and tiny TV, and a bed big enough that I could have shared it. And I mentioned I had trouble with sunlight, and they asked me if the curtains were too shear (they thought of the English word for shear before I did), and when I came back that evening, they’d taped newspapers over the window. No free “breakfast” and coin-operated laundry machine was present.
It’s still 6000 Yen, but the exchange rate is less favorable now — $1 was ¥109 in 2003, it’s ¥93 now.