Often times the celebrity isn’t paying directly with a credit card, but the hotel sets up a billing account and invoices the local venue where the celebrity is playing/speaking.
The reservation is made under a pseudonym with a little notation for the front desk clerk that it is a pseudonym and any instructions on who is authorized to recieve keys.
We’ve had celebrity guests at our hotel where the guest’s real name was either a closely guarded secret known only to senior management to announced to all staff in a memo and everything inbetween.
The generic term for a false name adopted for a specific purpose, whether good, bad, or neutral in nature, is “byname.” A oen name is one example, an alias another, a false name used to register at a hotel yet a third. Continued use of a naiden name by a female celebrity, writer, or public figure used to be another example, when the default was to adopt one’s husband’s name; this has of course changed with changing customs.
There’s a difference between checking in under an assumed name and registering under an assumed name.
You can register under any name you want. I’ve worked in hotels for 20 years, and never seen a place that wouldn’t let you do this. The hotel only cares they have you’re correct name (in case something happens and the police, fire or ambulance are called) and the payment is good.
I’ve had lots of people say "put me down as “So and So.”
As for celebrities, I’ve had quite a few stay at places they work. Generally they don’t check themselves in, they have assistants to do that. A few I knew did like Ringo Starr and Sheryl Crow as all miffed at me when she found out I never heard of her.
I remember Chita Rivera kept going on about how “no one must know I am in this hotel.” I was like “Lady this isn’t 1959, no one even knows who you are today. You can yell it on Michigan Avenue and no one would even care.”
I remember Dan Quayle, this was about a year after he and Bush were defeated made a reservation. Normally people like that call and talk to the Revenue Manager (he handles reservations). But Quayle made this reservation through the 800 number. The GM was like “Mark why didn’t you tell us someone famous was coming in.” I said “I saw the reservation, but it never dawned on me someone famous would use the 800 number to book a room. So I thought it was someone else.”
The only celebrity we had a HUGE deal going on was Janet Jackson. I have never seen that much security. Even when Clinton and the Democrats were in town in 1996. No one ever laid eyes on Jackson. Sometimes I wonder if she stayed with us or if it was a bluff for her fans.
And me. And the media. And everyone in this thread now.
You ever see those situations where a celebrity is going into a nightclub and all the paparazzi are taking their picture? And the celebrity is so annoyed about how they have no privacy and just wish the media would leave them alone.
I read an article about the paparazzi once and it pointed out the obvious: they’re not psychics. How do you think they all happen to be waiting outside that club for the celebrity to arrive and be ambushed? It’s simple - the celebrity calls ahead and tells them what club they’ll be going to and when they’ll be arriving. One of the paparazzis said that the celebrities who genuinely want privacy have no porblem getting it - they just don’t call the paparazzi.
Celebrities say they want to be anonymous - but they usually want to be sure that as many people as possible know they’re being anonymous.
This makes no sense at all. Do the hotels in your town make a practice of printing their guest list in the paper? Do you regularly call every hotel in town and ask if “Donkey Penis” has checked in yet?
I suppose that if you were staying at a fancy hotel in a town where it was known that Johnny Depp was located and you happened to ask at the front desk, “Can you put me through to Donkey Penis’ room?” and you had the correct hotel and you didn’t look/sound like a complete idiot, they would possibly put you through, at which point Mr. Depp’s assistant would figure out that you had no connection to Mr. Depp and might have words with the hotel staff that would result in a discussion between you and the manager about needlessly bothering his guests.
It’s also possible that Mr. Depp used “Donkey Penis” for a while, it became known on the Internet and he has since switched to something else.
Either way, how does any of this make him an attention whore?*
*Please note that I’m not arguing that he isn’t an attention whore, just that using a fake name at a hotel is not a particularly reliable indicator of attention whoredom.
Not all celebs call the paparazzi. Some of the big names have those guys outside their house almost 24/7 , they don’t need to be called. And they also stake out the popular clubs where celebs go. I’m sure they get calls about the younger/newer celebs who don’t have a family or kids so they don’t mind much being in the tabloids.
Because Mister Donkey Penis calls attention to itself. If all Depp wanted to do was screen out fans and stalkers, he’d go to the hotel and tell them to only pass through calls from people who ask for Glen Lantz. It’s an anonymous name that people wouldn’t bother talking about. But picking Mister Donkey Penis means that everyone at the hotel is going to tell their family and friends about it. And doing unnecessary things just to call attention to yourself is pretty much what being an attention whore is all about.
Thanks for trying to locate the name. I just haven’t heard it yet.
I’m going to go through my Firefox history and check all the YouTube videos that I’ve watched. I’m fairly certain that’s where I saw the interview (or whatever it was), because … well, because I don’t watch TV.
Or, potentially, it makes it easier to deter stalkers and fans from tracking him down at the hotel–nobody would think twice about getting a call asking if Glen Lantz had checked in [even if there was no such person in the hotel]–making it easier to call a number of hotels to find out which one Depp is staying in----but the reaction might be very different if someone called a bunch of hotels trying to do the same thing–but trying to find someone checked in under the name Depp Uses/used.