It is actually a rational choice. It is a defense against extremely bad experiences.
A personal example from a few weeks back. My SO booked a hotel for a weekend as a birthday present. We went there, it had a fantastic spa, dinner was delicious, the room great, clean, and so on. Individually designed, well thought out, friendly staff.
Breakfast came around and the coffee was abysmal. Really truly abysmal. What did we do? While eating breakfast we looked for a McDonalds, as we know for sure, that regardless where you are - you will at least find an okay and drinkable coffee at McDonalds. It is not a great coffee. And will never be. But the likelyhood is very low that you will find a shit coffee.
Marriott is basically the same for hotels. Or MotelOne in Germany. It is the power of brand - you get a solid 7 out of ten. And to be honest - when I am traveling for work, this is all I want. I want to know, that I will have a clean room, a bed that is good to sleep in. And the knowledge, that I will likely wake up rested the next day when I have to be at my best for my clients.
The risk of ending in a shit-hole got smaller because nowadays people write their experiences - but on the other hand, having seen how many of my reviews were being deleted by Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and the likes because some lawyer requested it - I don't give a rat's shit for online reviews.
Marriotts are sadly not the same between countries, and that's probably a good thing.
The standard for large chain hotels in the US are much, much lower than everywhere else in the world. Full-service Hiltons in the US don't even have executive lounges anymore.
> The standard for large chain hotels in the US are much, much lower than everywhere else in the world.
this is true for fast food as well. mcdonalds in poland and spain were MUCH better than the slop in america. I had taco bell here in srilanka recently. it was DELICIOUS and tasted like real food. same goes for popeyes and pizza hut here. pizza hut in america on the other hand tastes regrettable and left me feeling like shit.
mcDonalds in Poland used to be the luxury brand. This is the part Americans don't get.
It used to be the new, western chain that you only saw in American movies, and then you could experience it for yourself. When I was a kid (middle / solid working class family), we'd semi-regularly do mcDonalds trips as a treat. The experience of going to mcDonalds because you were too poor to do anything else was unthinkable to us.
Other brands that are staples of the American experience were also like this. CocaCola definitely comes to mind here; most of our tapwater is drinkable, and bottled water is much cheaper than coke, so that was the default option for most people, along with coffee and tea of course.
Somebody did the calculations on Polish Twitter recently, and apparently taking a 4-person family to Pizza Hut in the early 2000s used to cost more than our average daily wage.
I'm guessing if they see McDonalds coffee as "okay and drinkable", this might be a different problem than the way the hotel makes the coffee. Or maybe the McDonalds we have here in Spain is just much more terrible than in the US, but I'll take random bar/pub coffee or even machine coffee over what they serve at McDonalds.
McCafé in Germany is drinkable. The coffee in the restaurant after dinner was superb. They just had a typical crappy coffee machine with shitty coffee in the morning restaurant.
This will do as much to solve your problem as talking to Google on why a search result was bad. Even if they agreed they won't change their coffee machine while you're there and they won't rehire more skilled staff etc etc.
A personal example from a few weeks back. My SO booked a hotel for a weekend as a birthday present. We went there, it had a fantastic spa, dinner was delicious, the room great, clean, and so on. Individually designed, well thought out, friendly staff.
Breakfast came around and the coffee was abysmal. Really truly abysmal. What did we do? While eating breakfast we looked for a McDonalds, as we know for sure, that regardless where you are - you will at least find an okay and drinkable coffee at McDonalds. It is not a great coffee. And will never be. But the likelyhood is very low that you will find a shit coffee.
Marriott is basically the same for hotels. Or MotelOne in Germany. It is the power of brand - you get a solid 7 out of ten. And to be honest - when I am traveling for work, this is all I want. I want to know, that I will have a clean room, a bed that is good to sleep in. And the knowledge, that I will likely wake up rested the next day when I have to be at my best for my clients.
The risk of ending in a shit-hole got smaller because nowadays people write their experiences - but on the other hand, having seen how many of my reviews were being deleted by Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and the likes because some lawyer requested it - I don't give a rat's shit for online reviews.