Some luxury hotels have found a new way to charge you double for (roughly) the same thing: they simply rename their offer. When I stayed in a Hyatt on my latest Asia trip, I discovered that the hotel had recently built a spa area next to the fitness center. They now offer massages in two places – the quiet massage room adjacent to the fitness center, and the “spa room”; both are virtually identical but the massage in the spa costs twice as much (more than USD160).
How can you justify that price premium? I guess you could call it “segmentation”: let the the zen-desperate pay for their “spa experience” massage with a scented candle added. Even more preposterous, they are charged another USD 30 if they want to stay in the same room after the massage, to “meditate.” Serenity-seeking couples can pay a USD 50 markup if they want to enjoy their massages next to each other in the same room. They really charge you big for "experience." But I guess I may be to blame, in part, for this sort of experiential pricing nonsense. Didn’t I write in my books over and over again that “experiences have value”?
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