Haro about the minibar? In 2005, a survey by JD Power & Associates who each year publish the long-awaited ranking of the best brands in the United States by segment started a crisis: the client wants a refrigerator in his room. But an empty refrigerator, available to him, rather than a minibar filled with mignonettes and overpriced alcoholic beverages. This personal refrigerator is even one of their primary expectations after free breakfast and a coffee machine. Denis Lera, sales and operations manager at Minibar Systems, hides nothing: "Although today hoteliers are asking themselves if minibars are indispensable, more than 70% of clientele surveyed confirm the desire to keep a "real" Minibar service. Moreover, it remains one of the only sources of additional inroom profit". But several arguments are not in its favor: the cost of energy, maintenance and the labor necessary for taking care of this service.Energy savings, automation, hotelier support, innovative financing packages, design: suppliers have many solutions for turning this potentially costly service into a profit center. Professionals specializing in manufacturing and distributing minibars have many arguments for gilding the minibar’s faltering image. "It is up to us to prove to them that the new generation of minibars generates both economies and profits," Norbert Ybanez. And they’re sure to show us!Several studies with contradicting results confirm, or on the contrary, undermine a quiet burial for the minibar. Among the prosecuters, the site www.hotelclub.fr where only 1.89% of clients questioned last December declare that they let themselves to be tempted by the minibar. In 2004, the site Orbitz made the same observation without being so radical: 68% of those surveyed did not use this service. The magazine T&E’s by North Star Travel Media, meanwhile, listened to what its readers consisting of travel managers had to say. Result: among the...