Same room, different guest

A hotel room in the Gulf does two jobs a year, and the summer one is not the one it was built for.

From October to May the guest is a traveller. They needed a bed near the meeting, arrived at eleven and left at seven, and the room's job was to be clean, quiet and close. The rate was set for that person, and that person has gone home for the summer.

From about now until September the guest is a resident. A family from twenty minutes away who have not been outside in daylight for a week. They have a bed. They need a pool that is not the compound's, a lunch somebody else cooks, a corridor cold enough for the children to run down, and a reason to leave the house.

The first kind of hotel cuts the rate. The summer offer goes out and a traveller's room is sold cheaper to a family that never wanted one.

The second kind changes the product and keeps the rate. The pool day, sold without the room. Children eat free. Breakfast until noon, because nobody here has a meeting. A late checkout on Saturday, because in Riyadh the weekend ends on Saturday night. The thing being sold is a day, and a day has a different price from a bed.

I have watched both kinds share a street. The discounters fill the rooms, empty the margin, and by August have taught the resident to wait for the rate. The others fill the pool and the car park, and the room comes along.

Somewhere in the region this weekend there is a day off for the Islamic New Year, depending on the country and the sighting, and a family deciding where to spend it. They are choosing a day, and the rate will follow.

The room is the same and the job it is hired for is not. A discount is what a hotel does when it has not noticed.