How much is a hotel room for the night worth? A meal in the restaurant? A drink in the bar? A hotel on the outskirts of Tokyo this week initiated a novel payments system, which pushes the adage that the customer is always right to the ultimate degree. Hotel management says it will leave it up to its guest's sense of fairness to decide what is an appropriate price - and it still expects to turn a profit.

Patrons receive a bill showing the suggested price, with a space next to it in which customers write the amount they are prepared to pay. They must, however, put down at least 38 per cent of the hotel's guide price. A hotel spokesman said the scheme, which has already been test marketed, shows that the average amount which customers are prepared to cough up is roughly equivalent to a 10 per cent discount on the suggested price. The Irish hotel sector, while ever receptive to innovative marketing, may balk at this particular example of oriental enterprise. Don't even think of raising the matter at the reception desk. An expletive deleted refusal may give offence.