Budget Travel Blog

I love it when I get to upgrade to a nice hotel room at a low cost. However, nice rooms come with their drawbacks. One of my pet peeves when it comes to nice hotel rooms is that they often come with mini bars. There are two reasons that I don’t like this:

1. I’m tempted to waste my money on the snacks here. Even if I don’t want to touch the alcohol, there are always appealing little snacks that are way over-priced. And they aren’t good for me. And yet, when they are placed right there in my room, I’m tempted by them. I don’t want to walk to the vending machine anymore. I become lazy. And although I can usually stop myself from spending the money, I always feel torn.
2. The automatic sensor payment system drives me nuts. We had a big ordeal once when we stayed in a hotel room in Vegas that had a mini bar. The kids wanted to check out the goodies. We told them that they had to put everything back, of course. However, it was too late. The room was charged for many of the exorbitantly priced items. That’s when I found out that there are automatic sensors in the mini bar that tell the front desk if you’ve removed items from the area. You get charged for them even if you put them back. We did end up working out that particular bill with the hotel but boy was it a hassle!

For these reasons, I always check to make sure that the room I am getting doesn’t come with a mini bar. It’s nice to upgrade to a better room when you get a bargain-priced opportunity to do so. However, I tend to think that it’s not worth it if the mini bar is in the room. Has anyone else had bad experiences with this?

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