Can you see me from up there?
George Michael at the O2 in Dublin was the reason I found myself on the lastminute.com website last Monday – as usual I was lastminute.com when it came to looking for a nice place for us to stay so here I was browsing ..
There is a nice feature on the lastminute.com website whereby you can elect to stay in a “secret” hotel – for those who haven’t used this feature the website gives a general description of the hotel , it gives you a general location description and it gives you the star classification.
My criteria was simple enough, city centre location, handy enough for the O2 and either 4 or 5 star and of course I was hoping for a bargain – maybe a cracking last minute deal in the lap of luxury!
I found a “secret” hotel that seemed to be perfect – “a romantic luxury hotel in an idyllic setting perfect for a couple and just a few minutes from Trinity College, Stephens Green and city centre shopping“.
This gem was available for both of us for only €76 euros. I wondered where could it be and tried to match up the description with my knowledge of city centre hotels.
There were other secret 4 and 5 star hotels and these were €140 and €189 – could we be that lucky that we discovered the perfect romantic hotel in a perfect location at an incredible price? I doubted it but why not.
You have to confirm your booking and then your “secret” hotel is revealed..
The Burlington Hotel .. Hmm not exactly modern, idyllic and romantic and not exactly next to Stephens Green. However I reasoned that you get what you pay for, I should have relied on the price and not be taken in by the description.
A taxi ride later and we arrive at the O2 and produce our very expensive tickets, show them to the usher and wait to be guided to the section where our seats were located. Deirdre is a huge George Michael fan so as soon as the tickets went on sale we deliberately bought the more expensive seats (over €130 each! – I did take a deep breath ..) as she wanted to be as close to George as possible!
We climbed and we climbed and found ourselves two rows back from the very top of the arena waiting to see if the mobile drink seller was also selling binoculars! I honestly thought the seats were terrible but I kept my powder dry not wanting to spoil Dee’s night and also resigning ourselves to the fact that complaining would be quite pointless.
The guy sitting across from us must have been reading my mind and he kicked off with the usher – he deliberately bought the most expensive tickets as a present for his wife and demanded to know where in the auditorium were the cheap seats if these were the expensive ones! The very polite usher quickly found some supervisory person who arrived and tried their best to calm the man down.
Jokingly I was about to whisper to the guy that my tickets were bad value for €30 but again he read my mind, beat me to the punch and told me his were €25. No sooner had our mutual joke finished when a group of ladies who had just been shown to their seats in the row behind us started giving out – guess who had deliberately bought the expensive tickets?
The usher was called and the supervisor made another trip up the heights to try to calm down the situation.
In every stadium there are good seats and not so good seats but you should be able to rely on the price to differentiate these so there is no unnecessary frustration.
Can your customers rely on your prices? ..They need to
By the way, George was great even from 1/2 a mile away!
Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion
