Monday, September 6, 2010

Ding ding ding, here comes the graphing mobile!

Once in a while, I feel I need to represent my thoughts pictorially and flex my dusty work muscles. Thus, a Venn Diagram to illustrate observations of accommodations in Korea.
The prevalence of love motels is what makes Korea an easy and affordable place to travel. They are well located, don't require reservations, clean, cheap, and available in every town. What's hard to wrap my head around is why it is seemingly so embarrassing to stay in one. Privacy curtains over the entrance to the parking garage ensure that, from the street, you can only see patrons from the waist down. Check in is through a tiny window (sometimes of black plexiglass) so the proprietor can't see you. To check out, one leaves the key in a box mounted in the elevator, again minimizing human contact. I'm not complaining; the last 2 nights of our Korea loop, we stayed here for $40/night:



What I'm saying though, is this. The tourist hotel located next door to the love motel charges 3X as much for similar or lesser amenities. The love motels are, apparently, somewhat shameful places to bunk up. Why doesn't an enterprising Korean start the low-end hotel, charging love motel prices but allowing the local patrons to feel respectable-like all at once? It's pretty easy, guys, just build a love motel but block the porn channels, don't offer day rates, and viola – you're a hotelier! Y'all make Hyundai's for god's sake, you can figure this out.

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