Take my hotel minibar - please

Guests hate them because who wants to pay eight bucks for a bottle of water, and hotels hate them because they're often money-losers (theft, spoilage,and a hassle to maintain.) So what is to be done with these things? From the WSJ:

In an attempt to convince guests to spring for pricey treats, some hotels are swapping out the standard potato chips and candy for unique local snacks or other items you can't get at the nearest 7-Eleven. The Ritz-Carlton, Santiago, for example now offers ham-flavored Chilean almonds. The Enchantment Resort in Sedona, Ariz., swapped out bottles of its lowest-selling beer, Heineken, with Grand Canyon Pilsner, a local brew.

Nah, that's not going to work. If I'm desperate enough to use a minibar at 3 in the morning, chances are I won't be all that selective. What about technology?

To cut costs and keep better track of sales, more hoteliers are installing automated minibars equipped with sensors that know when an item has been removed, immediately charging a guest's bill. Hotels and minibar manufacturers say these can cut labor costs since employees only have to check the roughly 25%-30% of rooms that use the minibar on a given day. Software can track how long items have been sitting in the minibar, cutting down on the problem of expired snacks. But automated minibars cause problems of their own. If you take out an item and put it back, you might be charged, though most hotels give a grace period of about 40 seconds.

This really is a problem. A few hotels are saying to hell with it and either taking out the minibar (or at least all the contents), or just throwing in all the minibar contents (except alcohol) for free.