All of the talk lately about inflation made me think about the Club Sandwich Index.
Do you remember that? For a couple years, Hotels.com published a barometer of sorts gauging the cost of a hotel club sandwich in major cities around the world, with the results theoretically showing the most and least expensive places to, well, eat a club sandwich in a hotel.
The idea at the time was that the club sandwich, a pretty ubiquitous hotel menu item at most full-service hotels around the world, could stand as a proxy for the most expensive cities to stay and eat in hotels.
Alas, it appears the 2015 Club Sandwich Index was the final one.
Way back in 2015, Geneva won the honors of the most expensive city in which to buy and eat a hotel club sandwich. It was £19.94 — the CSI was measured in pounds, and I’m too lazy to do a time-appropriate conversion to U.S. dollars. Mexico City hotels served up the most affordable club sandwiches, with the average cost of £6.37.
These were average prices; I have no idea how large the sample size was, or how many classes of hotels were represented in the sample, but the end result was a fun way to visualize what we all pretty much know — eating and staying is more expensive in certain parts of the world.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve read more about inflation spikes around the world, of course driven by uneven recovery from the pandemic. It’s inevitable, and the fact many aspects of the hotel industry will be affected is unavoidable, since consumer spending is what puts heads in beds.
This time around, snarls in the supply chain serve to further complicate costs and pricing, which we hear about a lot lately as it relates to food. The cost of vegetable oil, for example, is doubling or more in some cases.
But what about those club sandwiches? I took a little trip around the worldwide web (did we even still use that term in 2015?) to see where the CSI would stand today.
The basic chicken club sandwich at Le Bistro in Geneva’s Hotel Royal today is £24.66. Condimento at the Mexico City Marriott Reforma Hotel has one for £4.59.
Factor in the rise and fall of the pound sterling between 2015 and today. Then consider the effects of the pandemic and the fact that while tomatoes, bacon and lettuce likely can be procured locally in most places with agricultural resources, I’m sure there’s a shipping container full of mayonnaise, potato chips or frilly toothpicks loitering off the coast of China somewhere. I would expect the sandwich costs today to be much higher.
I mean, average daily rate is high here in the U.S. and even that isn’t necessarily enough to offset inflation. Maybe it’s time to start repricing your sandwiches, hoteliers! (That was a joke. I can’t talk about hotel pricing, I know.)
Thanks for bearing with my nonsense. Long story short, maybe the CSI isn’t a valid indicator of the rising costs of hotel meals and stays in this somewhat volatile economy. Or maybe it is and I’m just really impatient when it comes to data.
I’ll let one of the industry’s real analysts weigh in and tell me whether you think the Club Sandwich Index could make sense again today. Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn to let me know.
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