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Family friends recently returned from a trip to the Wynn Las Vegas, but the first story they had to tell wasn’t about luxurious accommodations, gambling, restaurants, or shows. It was about the snacks on top of their minibar.

The motion-detector minibar wasn’t new to me. Those are bad enough: You move any item in the minibar, and if you don’t put it back within 60 seconds, you’ve bought it. So much for making room to store your own food or beverages in there.

But what the friends told us was about the outside of the minibar. Snacks were placed on a tray. Not inside anything, but out in the open. (Here’s a link to a photo of the display.) There’s a warning that the food is on an electronic scale, and moving the item means you bought it.

This is just absurd. What if you wanted to look at the nutritional information on the back? Or, as one Expedia review noted, what if you have kids who inquisitively pick stuff up? (Best not to take the kids to the Wynn!) And check your bill: As one TripAdvisor reviewer learned, after getting hit with $100 of minibar fees, even though they didn’t consume anywhere near that much, you need to watch your charges, to make sure you didn’t accidentally budge anything.

What’s next, a tripwire that triggers a fee if you use the bathroom?

Related:
- The hotel minibar is dead! Long live the hotel minibar!
- Upgrades and Downgrades: Pizza delivery to your plane, wi-fi minibars, why airport security wants to sniff your armpits, and more

Upgraded: Onboard pizza delivery
If you’re stuck on a plane for eight hours, the pizza is free! (While supplies last.) Yes, another airline incident, again on American Airlines, with passengers trapped on board the plane for hours on end. Been there, done that. It happened on April 24th, when a Dallas-bound 757 was diverted to Midland, Texas, but it took weeks for the news to trickle out, not even making real headlines anymore. (So when is that Passengers’ Bill of Rights making its way to the Congressional floor for a vote?…) But the reporting of the story contained this nugget that demonstrates the absurdity of the event: “Pizza was delivered, but only 50 to 70 slices, along with 30 bags of chips.” People weren’t allowed off the plane, but it was okay to order takeout?! And whom do we blame for messing up the order? Were they taking requests? If I were onboard and called in an order for barbeque, could I have had that delivered as well?

Upgraded: Ryanair’s pricing
Euroskinflint Ryanair took a consumer-friendly step in the right direction this week: The airline started quoting their prices inclusive of taxes. Considering the number of mandatory fees and taxes that are added on, that’s a significant change in policy. Good for them!

Downgraded: jetBlue’s CEO and his many apologies
JetBlue founder and CEO David Neeleman, who took a beating for the way his airline kept passengers stuck on board its planes for hours on end back in February, may have won some sympathy for his incessant apologizing after the incident, but his board of directors fired him anyway. “Sorry” doesn’t pay the bills, I guess.

Upgraded: Hotel wi-fi…for hotel management, not you
Next time you check in to a hotel, your minibar may get better internet access than you. Hotel managers are rolling out new features that link their back office to your room via wi-fi, as well as creating in-house wi-fi powered walkie-talkie systems for staff members. In other words, yes, they’ll use wi-fi to keep tabs on your minibar, but they’ll continue to charge you $10.95 a day for you to access your e-mail from your room. Lovely.

Upgraded: Deodorant
If your armpits have that certain je-ne-sais-quoi after you lug your rollaboard around for a few hours, then the TSA may soon try to register you in a database of travelers’ odors. I’m not entirely kidding. Wired reports that the federal government’s Technical Support Working Group is soliciting proposals for a system designed to collect human scents and record them in a database “for future use to track a specified target.” For civil libertarians seeking to avoid detection, the solution is simple: Start dousing yourself with other people’s sweat. “Freedom sweat,” anyone?

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$1500 of sex toys were stolen from the Radisson Riverwalk Hotel in Jacksonville this past weekend, the AP reports.

As reported earlier, hotels have been removing minibars from rooms or replacing the traditional refreshments with more… adult fare. Romance is apparently also a dish served cold. (Who knew!)

Hiding the stash in the refrigerator is the next logical step. Someone phone in the tip to the Jacksonville police!

tags: travel | air travel | sex toys | minibars

Say goodbye to the in-room $4 Twix bar and the $7 mini-bottle of Absolut during your next hotel stay. USA Today reports that minibars are being removed from luxury hotels across the United States. The reason: people aren’t using them, and the labor costs of checking the minibar contents every day are outweighing the profits.

But don’t say goodbye to the soft sounds of the refrigerator’s compressor just yet. In place of the minibar, hotels are installing small, empty refrigerators.

Some people may miss the old minibars. Members of InterContinental Hotels’ Royal Ambassador program receive complimentary beverages from the minibar, and they may be worried that their elite status is being diluted. (My wife and I also enjoyed one memorable complimentary minibar during our honeymoon in Barbados: We were upgraded — of course — to The House, where the bottle of Bollinger waiting in the fridge was particularly nice…)

But the rebirth of the minibar as a simple refrigerator is good news for most travelers, who now have room to store items of their own choosing. While it’s nice to eat out, restaurant food can become tiresome during longer travels, especially at breakfast. Being able to have a simple bowl of cereal, with the milk of my choice, in my hotel room in the morning is hardly glamorous, but it makes travel more comfortable. Having a fridge in the room is a big plus in my book.

Alternatively, some hotels are spicing their ‘bars up a bit:

Some hotels including the Thompson in New York and James in Arizona are stocking their minibars with Intimacy Kits which, in case you need to ask, contain condoms, cinnamon mints, scented cloths, and even personal lubricants and feather ticklers.

Sassy! But I hope they don’t keep these things too cold…

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