Tea and Coffee - the ultimate and curious hotel divide ?

In today's economy it is important for companies to streamline their business, and ensure that the customer experience is better than ever. The travel industry is no different and hotels, are constantly needing to upgrade their products on offer, hence the reason we are seeing so many new and innovative products coming into the market place.

Just a few of these in-room innovations and benefits that hotels offer guests to lure them to stay at their property include Web TV, high speed internet access, electric control panels that Captain Kirk would be proud of, separate showers, in room fax machines, VCD players, heavenly beds (such as at Westin Hotels), bath tub pillows, mobile phones, free or empty mini bars and many many other gadgets and tricks useful and not.

So why is it in the year 2001 that there is still one very basic, curious, divide between a lot of the 4 star hotels in Asia and their 5 star counterparts ? Why is it that most 4 star hotels offer the basic and not so costly amenity of tea and coffee making facilities in the room where a lot of the 5 star hotels do not ? Are the 5 star hotels worried about customers spilling coffee and potentially staining their expensive carpets ? Or could it be, the hotels feel that guests staying in 5 star hotels can afford to pay for tea or coffee through room service, so why not let them pay ? Or perhaps they feel that guests in 5 star hotels are not used to making their own coffee - although this we would have to seriously questioned ?!

Some hotels including some (yet still few) 5 star hotels feel that tea and coffee making facilities in the room are an absolute must, after all it is not only a service, but also a privilege to be able to have a nice cup of morning tea or coffee, before heading for breakfast or a morning meeting, in the comfort of your own room.

Being forced to call room service and then allow a stranger in the form of a room service attendant to enter your room while you are still groggy, and to be asked to sign something to your bill may not be the best way for a guest to wake up to. So why do they do it ? All the other in-room innovations are deigned to ensure that your stay is as pleasurable and hassle free as possible, yet a lot of these top of the range hotels allow guests this hassle only minutes after they have woken up.

If perhaps the five star hotels that do not offer this service, feel that a kettle and a sachet of good old Nescafe is not of a five star standard then why not take the amenity one step further and learn a lesson from hotels such as the amazing Pan Pacific in Manila. The Pan Pacific Manila not only offers guests in-room tea and coffee making facilities but offers guests a coffee percolator in every room ! The Rydges Plaza in Dubai offers guests tea and coffee in every room however the executive floor rooms offer guests Dowe Egbert's filter coffee.

These two examples above, simply show how easy it is to take a simple innovation and make it even better, after all, if you know that two hotels that have similar rates, have added something as ingenious yet as simple as a coffee percolator you may be swayed to stay there. While it is a small and some would regard un-important bonus that hotels could offer, it is still a benefit, and in actual fact a comfort zone that rates higher than a lot of the newer advances that hotels are making.

We would very much like to hear from you on this and if you have any comments or thoughts on this small and curious issue then please send them to : editor@asiatraveltips.com