4 Star Hotels are out to fuck you!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve noticed a disturbing, well not really disturbing, but a trend that the “best” hotels have seemed to be doing lately. And it pisses me off.

They fucking rip you off every chance they get. Normally, we’ll stay at a 2-3 star hotel. Nothing fancy, usually about $50-80 per/night place. However, there is the odd circumstance that usually comes up once or twice a year that we need to stay in a “fancy” hotel for whatever function we are attending. Whenever we do, I notice that we get screwed for every little thing you while you stay in the hotel other than sleeping and taking a shit. I find it bizzare, as the small-ish chains and private hotels (that charge less than $100 per night) are usually the ones that will have complimentary telephone and coffee. However, not the “executive” hotels. No sir, these big, fancy ass ones will charge you for every fucking thing you do. I’ve become so aware of this as of late, I make a point of reading all the material the hotel leaves in the room to discover the various “charges” they levy so we don’t have a suprise when we leave.

Case in point: Mrs. Bernse and I were at a 4 Star Hotel in the heart of snowy Calgary this past weekend. Upon arrival, I needed to make a few phone calls. They were not urgent, so I decided that if there was a charge for using our room phone for a local call I was going to use the payphone in the lobby. There was no notice of a charge (of which I was happy) so I used our room phone about 6 times. When we went to check out 3 days later we were charged $1.50 for each fucking phone call we made. I protested, saying that I specifically looked in the room for notice of charges and there were none. She said (politely) that I should have called and asked. WTF? Should I call and ask if there is a charge for me to flush the fucking toilet or use the alarm clock as well? After my protesting, she reveresed the charges this time. Gee, thanks :rolleyes: .

While waiting for a Taxi, I overheard a conversation an elderly gentleman was having with the concierge. He was questioning his valet parking bill. It seemed that he was charged $20 each time the Valet brought his car out for him. There was a valet charge of $7 (which was not in argument) but the hotel charged him $13 EACH TIME as a “parking fee”. So, the old fellow was being charged over $100 since he needed his car 5 times during the day and he was not made aware of any charges beforehand. So, he apparantly just gave the valet a nice tip each time he grabbed his car for him.

So, here is the heart of this pitting:

Why is it that these fucking hotels that charge you several hundred dollars per night for the privilage of staying with them only to bend you over each chance they get? The smaller 2 star-ish ones generally don’t charge you a fucking thing to use your own god damn phone in your room and usually give you complimentary coffee to boot. But no, not these guys. Yes, you are staying in a fashionable hotel. Yes, the service is good. Yes, it is a nice place. But, for fucks sakes, that is why we are paying several hundred dollars per night to stay there in the first place! They charge you to use the telephone in the room. They charge you $20 to drive you car 100 yards. They probably charge you for use of the exercise room (I didn’t use it) and every other little fucking thing. Are you supposed to ask if there is a charge for every little thing you do?

It isn’t that we couldn’t afford to pay $1.50 for a phone call… heck, we could afford to pay $20. That doesn’t make it right. It’s the principle of it, even though I am certain this trend isn’t going away anytime soon. It just pisses me off :mad:.

2

Because people are willing to pay it, that’s why.

Or were you looking for a more cosmic philosophical reason? Cause I can’t find any.

3

You’re right. For what they charge, the fucking ought to come with the room charge :wink:

4

  1. If you pay “rack rate”- you are an idiot. Not that YOU do, but still…

  2. I agree about the silly phone charges. I once checked out of a hotel I had booked for a month over this.

  3. If I was “the elderly gentleman”- I’d refuse to pay.

  4. In the places I have stayed- they didn’t charge you extra for the excercise room

5

I would guess it has something to do with the fact that they are already expensive. They know that their clientele can afford the high prices already, so what’s a few more bucks?

I’m not saying I approve, but I’d bet that has something to do with it.

I wonder what percentage of their business is commerical. When I traveled in my job, I had to use medium-priced hotels, but I wonder if most 4-star trade is business travelers, who aren’t as concerned with the extra charges, since they’ll pass them on.

6

Two Words

Business Travelers
Executives traveling on business stay at the nice places and they don’t care about the bill as they aren’t paying it. So the hotels pad the bill every chance they get.

7

I’d second that, NutMagnet. If you’ve been around the corporate world at, especially where you can observe the Executive Type (ET) while traveling, you’ll notice that most ETs have a complete entitlement mentality. They’re on the company dime, and they deserve the best. So they stay at 4-star hotels (usually requesting a suite), eat fancy meals, use the phone a ton, etc. etc. because they aren’t paying for it. The nice hotels that charge for base services like local phone use are simply taking advantage of the fact that a LOT of their business comes from businesses. I’ve seen expense accounts you wouldn’t believe (and heard complaints from ETs you wouldn’t believe, either).

If you’re a working stiff who actually has to pay his own hotel fees, you’re wise to stick to the 2- and 3-star places like you normally do.

8

Heh. You know, it’s kind of funny. The room and charges for our stay were all expensed as we were business travellers. We were not paying a dime out of our pocket. Although, I suspect you’re all correct… it’s because most of their clientel just doesn’t give a shit what it costs. Why did I care even though I wasn’t paying it out of my pocket? Because it was a rip-off as far as I was concenerned and I called them to it, especially since it wasn’t posted.

9

Ah, yes, the fine art of the expense report. I’ve had execs drink eighty bucks worth of alcohol and then ask me if I can give them an equivalent receipt in food. That way “Bill in accounting” will reimburse them for their buzz.

I don’t really care, as long as they’re decent tippers; it isn’t my job to police their corporate expenditure. The only thing I find annoying is, for some reason, when federal employees put their alcohol on their government credit card. I think it’s b/c they’re such awful tippers; it’s like I picked up their tab and I still got screwed.

:dubious:

10

Tell me about it.

Robin

11

That’s amusing. Glad I stay in cheap hotels.

12

Guess I’m one of your ET’s. As I tend to travel for client business, and recharge my travel expenses, I’ll admit I don’t really care too much about the small and frequent ripoffs hotel tend to apply (laundry charges, phone charges, valet charges).

Tell me though - if it was you staying at someone else’s expense, wouldn’t you do the same?

13

Well, a few reasons.

  1. Someone is still paying the bill. It might not be me, but it is in turn effecting me by making costs higher. Granted, the company didn’t have to book us at that hotel in the first place, but all the functions were either in it or nearby so it saved having to shuttle people all around.

  2. The principle of it floors me, really. Seriously, I don’t see a massive stretch to charging for use of the television or alarm clock. Where does it stop? It’s nuts.

  3. As I mentioned earlier, these are places that are already charging top dollar for your room, which they should, its a classy place. I think a similar analogy would be paying $100 for your meal, but getting charged for the ice water at the begining of the meal or use of the dessert fork just because they might be able to get away with it. You don’t need them eat, but its kind of expected. IMHO it’s not necessarily good business to take someone for all they can possibly be worth but it is definetly tacky.

I guess it comes down to this: We (actually, Mrs. Bernse) are reimbursed 100% for our expenses on this past trip, but that doesn’t make it right to spend money just because it isn’t ours. When I send my staff out for seminars and meetings I appreciate it that they don’t charge up the inroom movies and eat at the most expensive resturants just because they can. I know I don’t.

14

Not if by “someone else’s expense” you mean “your expense”. You pad your expense account for a dime, the company makes a dime’s less profits. You and all the other ETs do that often enough and you’ve just eaten my Christmas bonus. Seems to me that excluding yourself from the company, telling yourself that the company’s expenditures don’t equate to your paycheck, is pretty shortsighted.

Yeah, I know, some companies wouldn’t turn the profits over to the employees, they screw us so we screw them… that’s sad too.

15

You need to wash down that grievance with a nice $2.50 Coke. :smiley:

Apart from the business connection, I figured the fancy hotels had the philosophy that if someone was dumb enough to pay $200 or more per night for a room, they were chickens ripe for the plucking on any sort of charge whatsoever.

I’ve always avoided these places except on a rare occasion when there was a meeting I needed to attend in one, there were no cheaper alternatives within walking distance, and I could pay out of job-related benefits.

16

OK, this may be the death of me, but, let’s try the devil’s advocate roll here:

4 star hotels generally do offer more amenities than what you get at two and three star hotels. More staff per occupied room, so better service - quicker check in/out. 24 hr room service (you MUST have this to be true 4 star hotel). This means someone being staffed to take the call and deliver the order even if no one calls between modnite and 5 am. Drivers of those shuttle vans that take you to your office or airport, concierge to make those diner reservations or to get you those theatre tickets you must have. Full tub/shower in your room? More time to clean said room. (I stayed at a Motel 6 once - just once - that had only a shower stall - yuck!) but the maid could probably clean that room in 10 - 15 minutes vs 30 mins for a regular room and about 40 minutes for a suite.

Are you nickled and dimed? Maybe, but are you paying rack rate? As stated above, most probably not. And god forbid we try to raise a rate on a customer. We’ve always paid $139.00 what do you mean my rate is going up 5 %? Well ya know what, our employees get raises too and if you don’t want to pay a higher room rate, then maybe if I charge you for using the workout room (spa fee), or for the shuttle (airport fee), then maybe, just maybe, I might hit the profit margin that Wall Street deems acceptable for the hotel industry.

Now I’m not saying that all those added on charges are correct, I know for a fact that phone rates must be posted prominently in US hotels, and the clerk who told you bernse that you should have called down and asked was as wrong as the day is long. But c’mon people, whaddya think? That the industry is not going to respond in some way to the pricline.coms and other places like that in some way? Do any of you work in places where you have not at least tried some creative ways to increase your revenue in the past two years? It’s called upsell, and it happens everywhere, every day.

You don’t want to pay those extra fees? Ask about it at check in. Ask to speak to a manger. Write it on your registration card, check your bill daily (you can do this via your TV at most hotels.)

And Jackmannii, some people belive the industry sees chicken ripe for the plucking, some see the laws of supply and demand. No one questions the airlines charging $750.00 for a ticket on the departure date that they could have gotten two weeks earlier for $150.00. If the market will bear it, why not charge it. Supply and demand, it makes the world go round…

17

Here’s another way to look at it.

Instead of charging $100 per room per night and charging $1.50 per phone call, the hotel could figure out that phone use averages out to $1.00 per room/night, and then charge everyone $101 per room with free phone calls.

Now, who should be the person that pays for phone calls, those who use the phone or everyone who stays at the hotel regardless of whether they use the phone or not? The way the hotel mentioned in the OP does things insures that only those who use a service pay for it and not everyone.

Note, the above scenario assumes that $100 and $1.50 are market rates and $1.00 per room/night is the real average.

Another example: I’ve been on one cruise, and the price of the cruise essentially covered a room on the boat and that’s about it. Although I generally think that one who uses something should be the person that pays for it, I’ve always thought that those who drink would have a much better time if drinks were free for everyone and everyone’s ticket prices were a little higher. I even think that the increased happiness of the drinkers would outweigh the decreased happiness of the non-drinkers because the whole process of paying for drinks was just obnoxiously difficult.

Yet another example: my law firm (a really large one) charges more for my time than does my wife’s law firm (a really small one). However, in my wife’s firm the secretaries and paralegals also bill directly to the client, and the client pays for every little thing extra. Now, a client of my wife’s firm really has no reason to complain that they are getting nickeled and dimed because they are making up for it in lower billing rates overall; the firm essentially passes on its expenses to each client as the client makes the firm incur those expenses instead of just guessing at them and passing them on in bulk in the form of higher fees.

So, the point is that maybe the market has decided that it would rather have only those people that use these services pay for them, and not everyone in the form of higher room rates. (And notice I’m assuming that the phone charge and valet charge are reasonable and that it’s OK that they are borne by someone.)

18

Fair enough, Jane, but you’re also paying substantially more for the price of the room in the first place, presumebly to cover the added expenses of the pricer property, more staff, yadda.

That is the way, presumebly, every other hotel does it that does not charge “extra” for a phone. The Hotel is going to pay the phone company every month regardless of how many local phone calls are made, if the room is occupied or not. You have to average out phone service the same as you would power, gas, TV, yadda. It’s a utility. Factoring in your costs into the price of the room is good business sense. The problem I have is when you fleece your guest unannounced.

How about the idea of a power meter on your room and if you leave your bathroom light on all night they charge you an extra $2 for wasting their electricity? Actually, that makes more sense to me than charging you for local phone calls that isn’t costing them any more.

19

Don’t you just hate it when they do this to you?

“Okay, I’ll take it off the bill this time. But the next time you stay at our ridiculously overpriced hotel, I will make a point of remembering your face and screwing you twice as hard. Just to make a point.”

This is why I hardly ever stay in hotels if I can avoid it.

20

I’m with you 100%, except for this correction.

Most businesses, presumably including hotels, pay for local calls on a variable basis – they don’t get the “all you can call” plans that we individuals do. As for the “why phones and not electricity” argument, it’s probably only because individual electric meters for each room are too expensive, whereas local call detail comes with the switch. :wink:

Also, I don’t know of any major hotels, regardless of the number of stars, that don’t gouge you on the phone usage. But yeah, it’s a gouge – the phone is a major profit center for many hotel chains, and that profit center is slowly vanishing as more travelers make their calls on their roam-anywhere, 700-minute/month cell phones. Just be careful not to be out of their calling area – then you’ll think the hotels are offering an unbelievable bargain!