hotel room mini-bars

I’ve never understood the business model of hotel room mini-bars. If they charge, say, $5 for a Snickers, they’re just going to tick off their customers, who most likely are just going to walk down to the lobby and outside to a convenience store instead.

Instead, why not just slightly overcharge for the convenience? If it were $2 or $2.50 for a piece of chocolate, I might go for it occasionally and not find it too unreasonable. Instead, we’ve all been trained defensively never to fall into the mini-bar trap, and thus most of us never even consider using them.