Would the costs of visiting a destination impact on your decision to visit?

[anat0l]

Same with food here. $30, $40, $50 for a main course. Often for some quite small serving sizes and with varying quality and service. Was at a hotel in Melbourne... a room service steak was $45, then they wanted $8 for a sauce to go with it (peppercorn etc). Another hotel - $44 for a buffet breakfast. $10 for a side bowl of vegetables in a restaurant is not uncommon in Australia.

Why are you ordering a room service steak?

If you're going to pay that much for a steak, might as well go out to a nice steak restaurant, pay the same price and, more often than not, get a better quality meal and experience.


Expensive buffet breakfasts at hotels are not entirely out of the question in Australia, let alone in many other places around the world. Whilst it may be more affordable to us in some places, it can still be horrendously expensive for the locals. That is likely why the only people who actually pay for it are those on an expense account, unless the hotel is actually highly acclaimed for said buffet (breakfast). Everyone else either has it as a bundle, or gets it gratis one way or another. Everyone else ventures outside the hotel for their breakfast, and that happens nearly all over the world.


The irony is that "getting used" to the pricing in Australia has helped me swallow, to some degree, pricing in Switzerland. It is very similar to pricing in Australia, or at least if you only look at the numbers and not the currency symbol.


Some places have a reputation for "risk of being ripped off" more than others. Many travellers quote Italy as a prime example where you can pay too much for very average or below average quality or quantities of food. I have no problem paying $100, GBP 100, EUR 100, CHF 100, USD 100, SGD 100 or whatever for a meal, but it has to be worth that. If I even spend EUR 10 for a lacklustre meal, you will feel "cheated".

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Why are you ordering a room service steak?

If you're going to pay that much for a steak, might as well go out to a nice steak restaurant, pay the same price and, more often than not, get a better quality meal and experience.

Cause sometimes you just want to relax and chill!

I love getting to Singapore for example and ordering a club sandwich, fries, and an ice-cream sundae from room service at midnight.

 

[anat0l]

Cause sometimes you just want to relax and chill!

In the privacy of your room? Not sure if a steak via room service would be up there unless I knew it would likely be of good quality. That'd be just ordering the food for the sake of being lazy and wanting that food, not to necessarily expect a great one, let alone to grouse about the price. But anyway, each to their own.

I love getting to Singapore for example and ordering a club sandwich, fries, and an ice-cream sundae from room service at midnight.

I sometimes find myself ordering something like that after a night of drinking as a bit of an alcohol buster, though suffice to say in my experience the quality - including in Singapore - has varied widely. Sometimes you don't care, but the next morning sometimes you think why did you throw that on the room folio when you should have just held out until the next day.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

In the privacy of your room? Not sure if a steak via room service would be up there unless I knew it would likely be of good quality. That'd be just ordering the food for the sake of being lazy and wanting that food, not to necessarily expect a great one, let alone to grouse about the price. But anyway, each to their own.

The steak was just an example to show the rip-off pricing of this hotel. All other items were similarly inflated. So just looking at the menu you felt like you were being taken for a ride, rather than being welcomed as 'a guest' as they were at pains to point out in all their literature!

 

[Milboo]

Cost of visiting a country/ city do impact my decision making but I plan for this to ensure I visit the places I want to see.

I am generally thinking 2-3 trips ahead at any given time so work to combine a high cost destination with using points for airfare if possible to keep the overall budget down.

I also think about my priorities for a trip - for example, last year in South Africa I knew the private lodge experience would be fantastic and given you're confined to the property, quality was key. So we sunk the money into that part of the trip and then stayed at Guest Houses (which were still excellent) in places like Cape Town as I knew we would hardly be in the room.