Sue Wilson

I'm writing an article for Fortune Magazine about minibars. Do you have any good minibar stories to share? Do you love or hate minibars? I'd like to hear all about it!

Thanks.

Sue Wilson

John

I despise them. I think they are overpriced (gouging?) affronts. I NEVER use them.

Patrick

Always swore I'd never use one, but then we stayed at the Rialto Hotel in Venice overlooking the bridge with a little balcony and two chairs. We were trying to decide where to go have our usual glass or two of wine before dinner, and decided how could we find a better spot in all of Venice than our own little balcony overlooking the Grand Canal at sunset?? So we hit the mini bar and had my only cocktails of the trip -- that Chivas was awfully good. We did the same routine every night and the drinks were very cheap, about $2.00 each --less than at any bar -- and we felt we should have been charged some enormous cover charge for the view and atmosphere but we weren't. My only other mini bar experience was at the Ritz Carlton in Boston where I was coming down with something, so drank both orange juices and both V-8's out of the mini bar each of two days. The bill for those 8 juices was about $56.00. Oh, well, I suppose an office call at a doctor's office would have been as much, and it really did seem to cure my ills.

JoAnn

The only reason I like the minibars is to put my own pop/or snacks in-clearly marked. We have also used them to put milk and cereal in so we can have a cheap quick breakfast...we've done this several times when having to stay in one place for a period of time. Otherwise the minibars items are very, very overpriced!

R. Cormier

Sue,
I think (refrigerated) minibars are great. I buy cans of soda elsewhere and use it to keep mine cold.
I pull out the stocked items and replace them before I leave.
It must also drive the room attendants crazy when I leave my extras in there screwing up their item counts.
RC

Teresa

We usually don't use them and simply try to plan ahead and bring our own drinks and snacks, but can think of 2 times in the recent past when minibars came in very handy: 1. at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort on a very hot and sunny January day--all set to hit the pool and--no sunscreen. The minibar/"thing" drawer had a fairly good-sized tube for $7 and saved me a trip to the gift shop.
2. at a Washington D.C. hotel (another Loews) during a brief but heavy July afternoon thunderstorm. Two restless kids and no chance of sightseeing for at least an hour. What to do? We let them hit the minibar for snacks as they
watched 2 oh-so-long irritating episodes of Pokemon while we adults took well-deserved naps. Was it worth $15 of plundered minibar food? You bet!

Donna

We prefer rooms with mini bars. We always travel with a one-cup coffee maker and appreciate the refrigerator for storing our real cream/milk. While sometimes the prices are outrageous, often they're not. In Montreal, drinks from the mini-bar were much less than in the cocktail lounge. In San Francisco, our room had a mini-bar. I asked at the front desk where I might find a convenience store. "Right around the corner", they told me. Straight uphill! After climbing one full block up and then back down, most of my soda and water were left over and I really didn't save much over the cost of same in the mini-bar. To me, one of the major inconveniences of traveling is not having your "kitchen" to visit at odd times of the day or night. So, if you've had a late lunch and skipped dinner and are famished at midnight, or wake up parched in the middle of the night, a mini-bar is wonderful to have.