Why has the modern hotel luggage cart not been reinvented? What could possibly keep this from happening? They must be terribly expensive. The average hotel can only afford one of these marvels per 225 rooms. If you are lucky enough to get one at check-in, do not return it to the lobby. Keep it in your room and discourage the cleaning crew from removing it by piling all of your dirty clothes all over it. Or just remove one of the wobbly wheels to make it really hard to move.
There is nothing that clearly marks the front from the rear. Since there is only one set of pivoting wheels, it would seem the odds of you grabbing the wrong end are 50-50. Sit in the lobby and watch. Everyone struggles. The only thing more fun to watch would be gluing a 50-cent piece to the lobby floor and watching people hopelessly try to pick it up.
There are no instructions. Even if you manage to drag the thing to your car, where do you hang your garments? On the top rack, in the little loops in the corners? Are those little pegs designed to hang plastic bags? Do I lay my suitcases down, stand them up, length wise, sideways, on their side or any combination of my choosing? Only a Tetris champion can appropriately stack the luggage to prevent everything from falling off.
Speaking of pivoting wheels, why is there only one set? Is there an unwritten rule about this? You can never get the cart onto an elevator without assistance, especially if you shove the wrong end in the elevator. It’s a parallel parking nightmare. A few things are assured to happen:
- You crash into someone;
- Because you have crashed into someone before, you wait until the elevator is empty so you can take up the entire space;
- Because you took up the entire elevator space, you’ll be embarrassed on the way to the lobby as the door opens and people stare in disgust because there's no room to enter.
When you leave the hotel there's either a sloping ramp, or worse, no sloping ramp, and a curb. If it has a sloping ramp, odds are, the entrance will have a slope too. As soon as you let go of the cart, it takes off across the covered parking area and you look like an idiot running after it.
Speaking of that, why do they not have at least one wheel that locks to prevent this escapade?
Then I thought about what our industry has done in response to the declining number of independent repair shops. A parallel can be derived between the unresponsive pains of the hotel industry's “luggage carts” and the automotive aftermarket's “luggage.”
In the automotive aftermarket, it seems we keep doing the same stupid things, and expect different results, ignoring everything else. Einstein called that insanity. Fifty-six percent of shop owners report that they are ready to exit their business in the next five years. Do you know why? I’ve been screaming why for the last 15 years – no time off, shortage of techs, poor financing options, fewer than nine days off per year and having to mortgage property they own just to stay in business.
We’ve lost 10,000 independent shops since 2007. Square pegs in a round hole? For sure. We’ve watched it happen and ignored everything we’ve seen, experienced, and been told. We’ve hauled our goods and services to our shops on a goofy luggage cart, smashing into everything as we go. Our shops are the reason we exist, let’s give them something better.
Think of the last time you changed your own wiper blades. They have always been very hard to swap, and it’s the main reason a huge percentage of people never change them. Goofy wiper blades frustrate the consumer, burden our inventories, and confound those trying to install them. Stop it. Just stop it.
Likewise, using the same-thing-only-different approach to helping our installer base is failing. Our shops need to make money and driving a square peg in a round hole is not working too well.
Luggage carts suck, but I guarantee that if a hotel chain lost 10,000 guests per 10 years as a result of a poorly designed luggage cart, they would either come up with a new luggage cart that actually makes sense, or else. It’s time to listen to what our shops need. They need to make more money without all of the decades of luggage.
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