Solution: Move Meeting to Paris, Hawaii, Bali or Better Yet, Vegas

In my last post, I wrote about price-gouging by the hotels in Omaha. To get some perspective on what this means in the real world, let’s look at the total cost of the trip for two people to share a room at this year’s Berkshire meeting including nonrefundable coach air tickets.

 A stay at the Holiday Inn Downtown will run either $874 and $914 if you fly from Los Angeles and New York City. This excludes transportation to and from the airport, parking, checked baggage, a rental car in Omaha, meals, and other miscellaneous fees at the hotel, and souvenirs. Bottom line, unless your friends drop you at the airport, you carry on luggage, bring a lot of Odwalla bars to avoid buying meals, skip the Internet service at the hotel, and drink nothing but tap water for three days, it’s going to be hard to avoid spending $2,200 or more for two people to attend the Berkshire meeting. (That’s as of today. The airlines haven’t started price-gouging yet, but if you wait to book your airline tickets, you’ll be sorry, if last year is any guide.)

 As I noted earlier, for a lot of people, it's well worth it. These numbers are so high, though, that I started to think about what else you could do with the money the weekend of the Berkshire meeting, at a hotel somewhere else, that was charging a non-ripoff rate.

How about a weekend in San Francisco? The Holiday Inn San Francisco is charging $218 per night the weekend of the Berkshire meeting. The Holiday Inn Fisherman’s Wharf will cost you $249.

If the Paris of America is affordable, then how much would the real Paris cost? The Holiday Inn Paris—Notre Dame is $225 a night. Granted, the dollar is strong right now, but still, we are talking about April in Paris vs. April anywhere else.  Similarly, a Holiday Inn in London, the King’s Cross/Bloomsbury, costs $274 a night. I found it even more surprising that the Holiday Inn Omaha is pricier next April than the 5-star Eden Hotel in Rome, currently available at $282 per night.

After doing this research it struck me that, surely, you will get killed on airfares to these destinations. It must not be a fair comparison. So I started researching packages. You can get a package for a three-night stay at the Holiday Inn Kensington Forum in London for $903 per person. The Crowne Plaza Hotel is only going to cost you $984 including airfare in Paris. True, it's $70 more than Omaha, but these deals were good enough that I kept looking for more.

Did you know that if you act fast, there are a few rooms at the Sheraton Kauai Resort for a three-night stay in Hawaii including airfare from LA for $846 per person? And the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef in St. Thomas U.S.V.I. will cost you $975 for the same airline deal from New York, only $61 more than the trip to Omaha.

At this point I was getting really intrigued. Just how far could you travel if not being price-gouged by the Omaha hotels' extra freight?  Do you want to go to….

 > Istanbul?  Cost is $982 to stay at the Crowne Plaza.

> Thailand? You’ll pay $1,092 to stay at the Holiday Inn Silom Bangkok.

> Beijing? It will run you $1,010 to stay at the Holiday Inn Temple of Heaven Beijing.

> Tokyo? Japan is expensive. But if you really want to splurge, you can stay at the Intercontinental Tokyo Bay for three nights including airfare for $1,225 per person.

Could the Holiday Inn Downtown Omaha be, literally, the most expensive “midpriced” hotel on earth during the last weekend of April 2011?  After some research I discovered that the answer is “no.” You will find worse deals in places like Johannesburg, Sydney, and Marrakesh.

While the lower prices abroad were intriguing, they only deal with one side of the supply question (abundance). To illustrate the effect of price-gouging, it helps to find the other side -- scarcity. I looked for other places with significant limits on supply. The Maldives seemed like a good comparison. Like the Berkshire shareholder meeting, the Maldives will not be here forever. Sure enough, three nights in the Maldives at the Holiday Inn Male will set you back $2,321. Tahiti, another place where the supply of hotel rooms is limited, costs a fortune. Bora Bora is astronomical, over $5,000 to stay anywhere. (I would love to see comparisons of the Bora Bora prices before and after the movie Couples Retreat.)

On the other hand, it is possible to go to Bali for little more than Omaha. The Holiday Inn Resort Baruna, Bali is $1,252 for three nights. So if you are willing to risk the once-every-few-years terrorist bomb to avoid the crowds around the Qwest Center during the final weekend of April, try Bali.

There you have it: the free market in action around the world. Warren  at various times has considered moving the meeting to Kansas City, which has more hotel rooms, so that people could shop at the new NFM. There are a lot of travel bargains right now. Kansas City is lovely, but how about a meeting in Paris? Or Hawaii?  Or Beijing? Or Bali?

Or, let's take the most obvious choice of all - Las Vegas. I would bet you anything the Berkshire meeting would attract WAY more than 40,000 people if held in Vegas. And Warren loves Vegas. It would be Omaha's loss. Somebody's got to lose here, the shareholders or the city. Warren, are you listening?