I’ve always loved this kind of study. Instead of looking at boring things such as the cost of a hotel room and a cab, a Washington Post blogger has used Trip Advisor data on room service costs to come up with the cost of some of the basics for room service.
They looked at 15 U.S. cities and tallied up the cost of a club sandwich, a bottle of water, a bag of peanuts, a bottle of soda and an individual serving of vodka. (By individual serving they mean those tiny bottles that aren’t really a proper serving, but that’s just me.)
The results are probably not too surprising. The most expensive city of the 15 studied was New York, with a combined, five-item cost of $55.80 U.S. – about $67 in Canadian dollars.
Next was Las Vegas at $53.30, followed by Honolulu at $50.50.
The cheapest three cities studied were Minneapolis ($36.60), Seattle $34.40 and Denver, which had a rock bottom price tag of $32.90.
The breakdown is interesting, too. New York had the most expensive club sandwich at $24.20. The club sandwich in Washington D.C. was in second place at $19.00. The cheapest? Denver, at $11.70.
(Maybe that should try a Denver omelette in Denver and compare that with New York?)
The bottle of water, on the other hand, was listed at $3.90 in New York but $6.70 in Vegas, where it’s dry as a bone and people tend to imbibe too many individual size bottles of vodka and get all dehydrated and need water. Oh, the unfairness of the supply-and-demand economic system.
Okay, you’re all thinking, so what about the cost of the vodka? That tiny, eensy-weensy bottle nets out at a whopping $15.80 in New York City, followed by $12.70 in Las Vegas. Denver? How about $7.20. Which means you could get TWO tiny bottles in Denver for less than the price of ONE in New York City.
Great stuff.
