Normally the New York Times isn’t on the receiving end of my rants about shoddy “travel trend” pieces. But I came across one from this weekend’s travel section that simply had to be cleared up.
Their story argues that hotel room prices across the world are surging: From New York to Asia, and just about every desirable destination in between, the prices of rooms – especially at hotels and resorts favored by luxury and business travelers – are expected to rise significantly, sometimes in the double digits, analysts say.
Wow, that’s probably the dictionary definition of over-generalization, when they try to extrapolate a few data points to, umm, the entire world. If you read the article, you’ll notice that they mainly talk about New York–over and over again. They also like to bring up India and New Delhi.
Of course, there are some places where they have it right, like Beijing, though that’s a gimme since they’re hosting the Olympics next summer, when demand will obviously be high for rooms. But I think it’s misleading and a disservice to travelers to be crying higher hotel prices–of course, I don’t think NYT‘s hotel advertisers will mind too much if the paper can convince everyone to just throw more money at the hospitality industry.