High Tech Minibar

from the be-careful-what-you-take dept

Trying to scam that hotel minibar out of its $5 bottle of water? Be careful. New highly automated minibars may catch you. Apparently, this is the next big thing in minibars, and it's saving hotels lots of money (which maybe they'll pass on by lowering the minibar prices to something this side of the sanity level). The article also talks about other technologies that will allow hotel employees to know whether or not a room is occupied before entering. Who knew the hotel business was so full of high tech gadgetry?
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  • identicon
    Ryan, 21 Nov 2000 @ 12:56pm

    Old fashioned?

    Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but:

    Coming up are fridges that go beyond proffering food and drink and billing electronically: They allow you to store valuables, control room temperature and more.

    isn't that what thermostats and safes are for? Yeah, I know it explains a bit more later in the article, but I can think of two situations where I wouldn't want this:

    1. I get up in the middle of the night, want a drink, and can't remember the combination to my fridge
    2. A crook breaks into my fridge, steals my valuables, takes all the food, sets my room temperature to 95�F, and orders a huge cash advance on my credit card, which is delivered to him/her in minutes.

    Hey, it could happen. I also disagree that personality has more to do with snacking from minibars than income. No matter how much money I had, I wouldn't pay $4 for a can of Coke. While I do think that snackers will want their snacks and will buy them at any price if desperate, if you listen to the jokes, they centralize on the price of minibars - people are just so used to exhorbitant prices that most buy/bring their own or don't bother.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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