Called to the mini-bar

Helen Fielding on the re-vamp of the hotel-room fridge

Helen Fielding
Sunday 05 March 1995 00:02 GMT
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THE novelist Michael Bracewell once opened the mini-bar in his Liverpool hotel to be startled by a large, unwrapped German sausage. "It was a huge blood-red elongated thing. I think it could have been left by the previous occupant. I didn't eat it."

There are many things which would be startling to find in a British mini- bar. Almost anything at all, in fact, except a selection of overpriced drinks, nuts or, just possibly, tins and, of course, a Toblerone. Not so in America, where golf balls, disposable cameras, "Intimacy kits" containing condoms and "jellies", Snickers bars, vitamins, asprin, sun-tan lotion, playing cards, greetings cards, T-shirts, novels, tights and cuddly toys wait behind the mini-bar - or "refreshment centre"- door to surprise and delight travellers.

"For a couple of years there's been a trend away from just liquor and snacks," Stephen Reid, Executive Vice-chairman of Minibar USA, explained. "Hotel people here are looking at the guest room as a marketplace. Advertisers in the US are finding the hotel guest a very unique target."

The American mini-bar has gone through a curve and emer-ged with a new identity, casting off its image as an uninspiring fridge-full of rip-offs. "Hoteliers are trying to reduce that negative response. Prices in general are much more affordable, hoteliers are trying to keep them on a par with the hotel shop. They're realising that people would rather snack on Snickers bars or M&Ms than luxury chocolates." Typically, says Minibar, in-room bars account for only 2 per cent of a hotel's food and beverage turnover but 20 per cent of the profit. The new lower prices - in a manner which seems so blindingly obvious it's amazing that no one thought of it before - are maintaining margins by increasing sales.

Even the problem of mini-bar fiddling is not exacerbated by the new diversity of contents, since even the most luxurious minicuddly toy or throwaway camera is unlikely to cost more than half a bottle of old-style mini-bar champagne. There have been advances in honesty-enforcing bars: where you have to press a button, open a flap or cross a laser beam to take something out, which then records the purchase on a computer. But the new range of goods is still widely sold in basic "Honour Bars" where you simply take out what you want, and lie to the receptionist on departure.

Classic deception ruses: filling empty whisky bottles with tea, drinking cans through a hole in in the bottom, stuffing empty chocolate wrappers with tissues are harder with non-consumables. You could, of course, put back a teddy after you've played with it for a while, but you couldn't take it away and pretend it was still in the fridge.

Strangely, Europe seems to be resisting the diversification from food and drink. Dieter Weisskopf of the Minibar Group of Switzerland (one of the world's biggest suppliers - ever wondered why all those minibar Toblerones?) pointed to smaller hotel rooms in Europe, less willingness to invest in larger cabinets, and more hotels within walking distance of shops to explain the discrepancy. His colleague Stephen Reid in the States mentions crime as a factor, making guests more inclined there to stay quivering in their rooms than risk their necks shopping for tights. "Ultimately, though, there is a philosophical difference. The European has not yet embraced the idea of hotel room as marketplace."

But while a spokeswoman in Minibar's UK office said: "In British hotels, quite frankly, many of the guests just want a cup of tea." Fiona Rees of Electrolux, another major British supplier, spoke of watches and condoms beginning to show up in in-room bars, as well as "seasonal things like teddy bears for Easter" - and, presumably, Easter Bunnies for Christmas. The Dorchester has been moved to adapt its normal offerings of drinks, nuts and chocolates to cater for an unfathomable American obsession with jellybeans.

Those British hoteliers who pooh-pooh the notion of a shift from food and drink should think again. The mini-bar has an image problem, there are no two ways about it. "Any drink taken out of a mini-bar becomes somehow sordid. It touches loosely on vagrancy, shameful hidden bottles, commercial travellers," says Michael Bracewell, with a view no doubt coloured by the sausage incident, but which, nevertheless, strikes a chord. "Philip Larkin should be the patron saint of mini-bars. They speak of deep suburban fears."

Even those who travel the world on expenses are dissatisfied. There was a time when the contents of the mini-bar were seen to represent the number of treats necessary to comfort a person during a stay: therefore it was only right and proper to try to get through them all.

"I think we've all been there and come through the other side," one journalist told me tersely, speaking of a "general horrifying trend to towards itemisation" on hotel bills, and the difficulty of getting mini-bar bills through the accounts department. (Unless the hotel has as, allegedly, the Beirut Commod- ore once did, a "laundry room" where, for a small fee, mini-bar charges became laundry bills).

Those who travel frequently speak of the heartsinking sense of world homogenisation on opening the mini-bar "to find the same junk that's been haunting you in aeroplanes and mini-bars all over the world". Others speak of the joy of finding something nice - a half-pint of real milk, a carton of pot noodles in Japan. It would be nice to open a mini-bar in Britain and find a selection of things which represented a genuine attempt to make you happy rather than ripped-off, drunk, and poggled with a box of nasty chocolates stamped with the hotel crest. We must all lobby hard for that day.

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