Transcription
Last year, I made you a video about how super-luxury hotels squeeze more money out of their guests. On that occasion, we allowed ourselves to be outraged [music] by a room costing over $2,500 a night that had moldy walls. A quick little scrub is all it takes to remove it. But hold on tight, buckle up, because today I'm bringing you something much worse. A room costing over $3,800 a night, which I promise will be the most disappointing thing you'll see all day. This edition of Luisillo the Complainer will be on another level. Let's do this. [music] This is The Pierre New York, a five-star hotel belonging to the luxurious Indian group Tash. Normally, a room like the one I'm about to show you in this establishment costs between $800 and $1,100 a night. But this weekend, prices have tripled, and here I show you the evidence. Both Saturday and Sunday, those two nights, I paid a price of 67,415 per night, which at the exchange rate of the date I'm recording this video is $3,870. [music] That truck almost ran me over, huh? I almost became a burger, and the hospital would have cost me, I think, the same as one night in that hotel. And what is the reason why this weekend New York, one of the most expensive cities in the world, is even more expensive? The World Cup, an event that moves masses and is the perfect demonstration of how supply and demand work. Are you ready to see how $3,800 translates in this city this weekend? Get ready, this is going to be disappointing. [laughter] This is going to be surprisingly bad. Welcome to this incredibly powerful 38-square-meter room, a single living space, [music] a single bathroom, a single sink, a tiny shower, [music] a 32-inch television. Wow, a normal room, I mean, a room like any hotel room, but for $3,800 a night. I mean, think about it, if it's 38 square meters, that's $100 per meter. [laughter] Like this, for every square meter this hotel gives you, they charge you $100. So, here's $100, here's another $100, or $100 more. Okay. Here, here already $500. So, this line is $500. This space occupied by the umbrella in the corner, which I call the umbrella corner because they didn't have any other furniture to [music] put. This is $100, $100 a night. To give you perspective. Do you remember the video I made about the most luxurious hotel in the world? The Burj Al Arab in Dubai. That suite I showed you with two levels, a spiral staircase, breakfast in bed included, those impressive facilities in Dubai, etc., etc. $1,500 a night. Okay, I paid $1,500 a night for that. Here we are paying more than double for a room, well, you're seeing it. Look, it's not that it's a bad hotel, it's a very nice hotel. It's clearly a fancy, lovely hotel, the facilities are very [music] good, the staff is super friendly. It's one of those hotels with a doorman, just like the Burj Al Arab, where they wrap your cables with a string with the hotel's name when cleaning the room. It's nice, it's pretty, but not *that* pretty. 800 positive things about the $800-a-night hotel: it has a bathtub of a decent size, I suppose. It's fine. I mean, I have to bathe alone. It's not like something's going to happen here, like in rap or reggaeton videos. No, no, this isn't a romantic jacuzzi or anything, but it's okay. We also have this incredible view directly to Central Park, [music] which wow, the location is very beautiful, this amazing view in few places, but yes, a window that opens [laughter] only that much, so that little corner is all that opens, right? Nothing more. And the last positive thing is that it has a closet. This is actually very unusual in a city like New York, a closet that fits suitcases, that fits clothes. It's fine, it's cool. By the way, it made me laugh a lot that on the closet door, there's a very official-looking paper, very transparent according to them, about the legally regulated hotel rates, right? So, the regulated rates, and it says double room from $895 to $20.50, so the maximum according to them is $20.50, but this weekend they said $3,800. You can categorize this little room as a suite, but well, no. The suites here must be something else. In fact, when we arrived and I saw the room they were giving me for the price I was paying, I told them in the lobby, "Uh, don't you have anything a little better, a little bigger?" And they gave me the line, "Yes, yes, of course, we have a wide variety of suites, for example," and they showed me one that was about 80 square meters, something like that, very nice, but I would have to pay an additional $4,500 per night. Additional, so they wanted me to pay, what? $300 per night. [laughter] No, wait. In New York, there are truly no limits. Here you can spend a fortune on very silly things. And negative things. Off. I could go on for a while, but I think the ones that most made me angry. You know, when you get angry and say, "No, this is an abuse." Is that there's no coffee maker, I mean, there's no way to make yourself a little coffee, a little tea. There isn't. The only way to get coffee in the hotel is to order it via room service, which will cost you $25, $30 for your little coffee. And another thing that left me like, what? Is that they don't give you water from the start. They have a very strange policy that they only give you free water after 5 PM. So, when we arrived after paying $3,800 a night, traveling all the way here, let's say, without exaggeration, 9 or 10 hours, and you arrive like, "Okay, I'm finally going to check into my hotel." You enter the room and there's no water. There's no water to drink. I call and they tell me, "No, the only way to get water is if we send it via room service, charged, or you get it from the minibar." And I'm like, "What?" So, I put on my pants, went down in my little shorts, you know, barefoot to the lobby to tell them, "Dude, give me water." I mean, "Give me water, man." And the guy tells me, "Still," "Yes, yes, take your water, we just remind you that you can't be barefoot in the lobby." And I'm like, "Son of a bitch, I'm thirsty. I wanted to take a nap after traveling for 9 hours. I can't have free water." And when they finally give you your free water, it's one of those Poland [music] Springs, you know, the ones from Sam's, from Costco. Look, not that there's anything wrong with it, it's perfectly good water, but I don't know, [music] one imagines something different when paying almost $4,000 a night. I thought they would give me one of the ones in the minibar, right? Where there's an Evian, a Perrier, I don't know, something they sell for like $8 each. And it's one of those fridges that, look, I'll do it just for the sake of the video. I mean, it's one of those fridges that have sensors. So, [music] by doing this, they've probably already charged me. I mean, I've already lost $8. Even if I put it back, the policy of these hotels is, ah, no, no. You moved it 1 centimeter, goodbye. I mean, it is what it is. You're going to drink it now. You've already paid $8, drink it. In fact, I'm going to show you this water situation so you can see that I'm not just a whiny guy for no reason. Hey, sorry. I want to have some complimentary water in my room please. At this time of the day that would be room service. Right now, the only way to get [music] water is by buying it. I have to pay for the water. [music] Appreciate you. Thank you very much. You saw that? [laughter] Before 5, brother, no water. And if you want water, go to the gym, seriously. And at least they're giving me an option, huh? Look, the first time they just told me, "No, I mean, it's pay or nothing." And I'm like, "What?" "No, no, no." Honestly, look. Yes, yes, I'm a whiny guy. I am, but, brother, I mean, almost $4,000 a night, I mean, I really thought someone would come like, [music] "Oh, yes, sir, I've brought this for you directly from the Himalayas. Of course. Here you go," and they bring a cooler and put, like, hand-carved ice, right? With a sword, right? From a samurai. Here's your ice, sir. Hydrate yourself. I don't know, that's what I, that's what I thought, honestly. [laughter] No, I don't know. But well, enough of just complaining. Let's talk now about why this happens. I just remember the shower we had at the hotel in Dubai and I get angry. I mean, I'm paying more than double for this. I mean, I can't even, look, bend down for the soap. I mean, I bend down for the soap and and what is this? I mean, what, what [laughter] is this thing? Why would anyone in their right mind pay almost $4,000 to sleep here? [music] [music] What we are experiencing are the inevitable consequences of the supply and demand effect, a phenomenon of which we are all, without exception, a part, and which shows us how when demand rises but supply remains the same, price is what will set the rules. Let's explain it in a very simple way. Suppose you sell chocolates, okay? If you sell them for one peso, you have 10 chocolates, 10 customers, so these chocolates will cost one peso. But suddenly, it turns out you don't have [music] 10 potential customers, but 20, but the same 10 chocolates. Now you can easily double the price. What happens if you suddenly have 30 customers, 100, 1000, 10,000 potential customers, but the same amount of [music] 10 chocolates? It means you can set whatever price you want because as long as [music] someone pays for it, you're going to make sure to sell it, you're going to be making money, and we really can't blame you for that. You surely experienced something similar in your city during the World Cup season. Normally, the lady on the corner sells you an imitation jersey of your country's national team for 100, 150 pesos. This week, 600, 800 bucks. And often it's not that the merchant is abusing or anything, often they are compensating for bad seasons. There will be times when you have your same 10 chocolates and only two potential customers. There you are losing a lot of money, and with high supply, you can recover. It's a very complicated issue with many points of view, but it is what it is. And in New York, being an extremely expensive city in itself, undoubtedly one of the most expensive in the whole world, these increases are exponential. The increases are seen in the most everyday things, like, for example, the fact that I paid $10 for this sausage on a stick. $10. They're going too far. Look, that could simply be because the seller saw me as a stupid tourist, and clearly the trick with those stands is that they never put the price on the signs. They put all the delicious food they sell, but they never tell you how much it costs. What it costs will depend on what the guy tells you at the moment. That might not be directly related to the World Cup, but it might be. One of the most controversial increases was in transportation, and I'm not just referring to taxis, Ubers, which of course went up a lot to go to the stadium, for example, just for one trip I spent over $600 on Uber, but the fares on certain public transport [music] also, a clear example is the train that went from downtown Manhattan to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the games were. Normally, a ticket for this train costs around 123. All these figures are estimates, by the way, because I don't want to be wrong with very precise information. I got all this from articles I read online and so on, but this ticket, which usually costs about $1, they proposed to increase it to $150, and after a lot of people protested and there was a lot of press about it, they managed to reduce it to something like $8. Still, six times its value. What the authorities argued is that to accommodate so many tens of thousands of people, they need to hire more security, more barriers, more infrastructure, more police, more snipers, etc., etc. So, only by doing an increase of about six times the original price is this made possible. And it's understandable, it's not the same to move 1,000 people a day as it is to move 80,000, to give an example. But these increases were ultimately paid by the users, and that's how it's reflected in various aspects of daily life. But if we take a leap and want to make this more sensational and tabloid-like, we have to talk about the world of luxury. It's no mystery. Being able to physically attend one of these events like the World Cup final. It's extremely expensive, very expensive. The minimum resale ticket was $7,000, I bought one for $7,500 that was all the way in the back, literally, in the back. I mean, there wasn't a seat further back than mine. I mean, let's do some simple math. Okay. For two, $15,000, right? Uh-huh. Between, what do you think, the whole thing lasted? About 180 minutes, 3 hours. Between halftime and blah blah blah. A, 180. So, we're talking about $3.33 per minute for the two tickets. So, per minute, per minute of being the last one, as close to the sky as to the players. We found out an hour late that Spain had won for $3 a minute, and let's go to those who were closer, those who were at the bottom, which cost $30,000 or more. And we're only talking about the ticket price. I mean, this is added to flights, transportation, the hotel, etc., etc. I was doing a price survey of hotels and discovered that if you stayed in three or four-star hotels, there was indeed a big increase, of course, but not so outrageous. For the spoiled brats like me, like your uncle Luisito, who wanted a five-star hotel, that's where things got really bad, right? I mean, the whole fist without a filter. Okay, without a filter. Here are some examples. Check it out. Just normal, simple rooms, okay? From 35 to 40 square meters. Nothing that makes you say, "Wow." At the Mandarin Oriental, 39 square meters, 111,000 pesos per night. At the Equinox Hotel, which is also fancy, 57,000 pesos per night. The Ritz-Carlton, well, that's well-known, very luxurious and all, but uh-huh, 39 square meters, 95,000 pesos. Yes, many, many. The hotel that possibly won the eccentricity competition is this one here, The Mark, which is supposedly one of the most luxurious in all of New York City. We've never stayed here. Someday we'll make a video, you know, to see what's really going on. To see what they offer us for those high prices. But ah, I'll tell you, this Mark hotel, which is very well-known, like, because celebrities stay here and it's like [music] for very rich people, they were offering a package for, listen carefully, a million dollars. A World Cup package for a million dollars that offered four nights in the penthouse suite of I don't know what. I mean, [music] it's surely an unreal, impressive suite. Then six tickets to go to the final game in the [music] best row, a 24-hour butler for whatever you need, and round-trip transfers to the stadium [music] by helicopter, so that not even traffic is a problem, I mean, by helicopter. Look, it's very top-notch, honestly, I don't doubt it. I mean, it's super wow, but a million dollars. I mean, bro, wait a minute. No, I mean, a million. Yes, without a doubt. I think it's one of the most eccentric things I saw in these World Cup packages I was researching. We went to ask at the lobby. Uh, they explained to us that the suite, the very expensive one, is obviously the one upstairs, the penthouse, which is 1000 square meters, I mean, it's two floors, it's a huge, huge, huge thing, and that only one lucky person bought it and that it's still here. That's all they told us, that was the information they gave us. And it's that in this city, the supply and demand effect goes through the roof, starting with the fact that today, the population of New York is just under 9 million inhabitants, and it's estimated that there are less than 4 million housing units. Look, we have to consider that many people live with family, roommates, etc., but it's undoubtedly a city with more people than housing units, so the average rent price easily goes up to $3,000 a month, but it can go up to much, much more. Transportation, food, services, everything, absolutely everything, is much more expensive. Honestly, in dense cities like this one, the supply and demand effect goes through the roof. [music] [music] Well, the World Cup season is over, the large influx of wealthy tourists that was in the city is gone. Demand has decreased, supply remains the same, so, come on, what I got for less than half, I mean, less than half, 54,000 Mexican pesos for two nights, let's say 27,000 per night. I mean, honestly. I'm glad I got this gem, but it's annoying to have been in the middle of the hurricane of crazy prices. I mean, look at this dog palace, 85 square meters with a sofa, a huge TV, a window with an amazing view, it has a part with a very fancy sink, it has a bathroom, a guest bathroom or whatever, very top design, it has a little closet for guests to hang their coats, right? No, I mean, another level, for less than half. I mean, the fact that I can be taking a dump, felling a tremendous forest of logs, releasing Willy himself in a bathroom far away, while my girlfriend is in the other bathroom doing her skincare, brother. I mean, this is, I mean, it's another level. I mean, this is an apartment. This is not a sponsorship or anything. It's just to show the contrast, right? Between high season and not-so-high season anymore. The suitcases go in a quite large closet, and the bathroom, I mean, the holo Borgos bathroom. This is another level of bathroom. I mean, look at this. Two sinks. A huge throne for the king. Look at this shower. Look at this. Here I can bend down for the soap multiple times, multiple things. I mean, it's really big, honestly. Yes, it's another, it's another level. Ah, guess what? Water. Water. Already waiting for us here, fresh, delicious, and free. Free water in a five-star hotel. Which, well, it's normal, right? It's what you expect, bro. Wow. Very good. Free water. Very good. No, it's really good. I mean, honestly, and for less than half, how impressive is what happens when demand goes down and supply remains the same. [music] Many say that the 2026 Football Cup has been the most expensive sporting event in the history of our planet, and this is not only reflected in ticket prices but in all the collateral effects. As I told you at the beginning, this event is a perfect example of how our economic system works, in which supply and demand define prices, and limits are set by humanity itself. What do you think? What are your opinions on all of this? I would love to read them in the comments below. Thank you very much for accompanying me on another adventure, and we'll see you, as always, you know, in a few days with a new video. Hopefully, this time, I know I've neglected you a bit lately, but I appreciate your patience. See you. Hopefully, in a few days with a new video. Goodbye.