My last few years in NYC, I stayed in local hotels a lot. Six different ones, I think……probably 20-30 nights total.
There are lot of legitimate reasons. One of the stays - the longest- was due to roommate situation. The rest were because of my apartment renovation - I tried to live there as much as possible but there were times when I couldn’t.
These stays were planned, and budgeted as part of the renovation.
Until I read this thread, I had no idea that any of the places I stayed might have a problem with me being local.
That might be taken the wrong way altogether, especially if the would-be customer is female. Or isn’t, but the clerk is. (Yes, I know there are lots of other possibilities; but I think those are the versions most likely to be taken wrong.)
Some places around here occasionally offer discounts to locals. They seem to be trying to get people to think of a day or two at the hotel as a vacation: get dinner and drink and don’t have to drive home, somebody else does all the cleaning, use the spa and the fancy hot tub . . .
Or someone fleeing an abusive domestic situation. I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been a press incident over someone in that situation running up against these policies.
Insurance companies usually contact the hotel to talk about insurance stays. Protip: if you ever need to stay at a hotel for insurance reasons, ask the insurance company if they can put you up at a nice one. We get quite a few and we are a resort. We did have to kick one family out for their behavior, though. Also for threatening a member of the staff.
I don’t know how they would handle someone fleeing domestic violence. They might bend the rule if the police escorted them there. I don’t know.
Most locals are not staying in extenuating circumstances.
Most of my hotel’s issues come from locals deciding to have an argument that turns into a domestic dispute, deciding that we are a Vegas party hotel, and bad credit cards. We are not alone.
I hinted at it before, but it’s possible this particular Quality Inn is known for attracting the wrong crowd, possibly including hookers/johns, and this policy is an attempt to cut down on the number of incidents causing police visits. It’s quite possible (as at least one other poster mentioned) that the no locals policy is particular to this motel and may not reflect what happens at most other chain locations.
Remembering that the Quality Inn in a small Midwestern city had…problems when I lived there, I just checked on its online reviews. The place was apparently torn down and rebuilt, looks nice and has very good reviews. On the other hand there’s a Quality Inn not far from me which has numerous scathing reviews, including “This is the type of place that as soon as I pulled up my thought was oh dear this is the place.”
I am very sorry to hear that you experienced such unusual circumstances and inconveniences
during your most recent interaction with, especially that we were not able to address the issues and
misunderstandings right away.
We will use this information to train our management and staff regarding reservation and checking of ID policies so no other guest will experience the same. We appreciate that you’ve taken the time to leave advice for our future guests.
And with that I’m gonna move on and try to stop getting steamed over it.
Thanks for stopping back to update your adventure. I wish it wasn’t just boilerplate, and that they’d included a free night’s stay, but at least you got an email…
No, that’s a reason to increase the steam pressure. They just told you that they’re going to step up their training procedures to… do what, exactly? Make sure that all their other desk clerks also hassle customers? You’ll notice that nowhere in there do they ever admit that you were wronged.
I’ve run into the “no locals” policy, locally. One place flat refused to accept a reservation. Another one, though, accepted me when I told them I was moving and needed a place for a few days between my lease running out and my new place being available. That was an explicit exception to their “no locals” policy. I actually read their policy after that, and it also had explicit exceptions for fires, floods, and other natural disasters. No requirements for any sort of evidence. I’m guessing that most locals that would abuse the policy also don’t think of coming up with those sorts of lies*.
In another case, after a minor hurricane knocked out power to my house, I booked a room at a nearby hotel that had power. As I was checking in, I noticed they had a “no locals” policy posted, but no one said anything to me. At that point, they probably just assumed any locals were hurricane refugees (as I was), and either had the same sort of explicit exemption for natural disasters, or just made a humane ad hoc decision.
ETA: At the place that flat refused to give me a room, the clerk actually straight up told me they had that policy with no exception specifically because they had had so many locals trashing their rooms and using them for illegal activities…
*I actually was kind of lying. I was crashing at a friend’s place for about a month in between my old apartment and my new house, and after a couple of weeks, he asked me to vacate for a few days so he could have some time alone…to not be alone…
Seriously. Let’s say my plumbing isn’t working, or the AC is out. Or I just want to get away? In my local area, they have locals specials during non-peak times. I have never heard this, and I live in Oregon.
Other people have described why a place may not want to rent to locals - simply put, it depends on who the locals are, and why they tend to want to rent hotel rooms even though they already live in the area…
But I’m curious about this sticker thing. What state is this? I’ve moved within state several times in my life, and have always gotten a new driver’s license issued. No sticker. Or was this a temporary thing to cover you for the 7-10 days or whatever it might take to print up a new license for you and mail it to you?
In my experience, the DMV took my old license with my old address, and gave me a temporary license that expired in 30 days with no photo on it - like you get when you first get a license after passing your road test. This was both in Maryland and in New York. And I got my new license pretty quickly, in about a week.
This was in Oregon. When you moved and updated your address with the DMV, they’d mail you a sticker to put on your license. The old sticker covered the lower third of the front and back, folding over the bottom. The newer sticker only covers the lower third of the back. It updates the barcode and your new address appears on it. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t change the front of the license so they got hung up on my old address.
Currently it seems the Oregon DMV doesn’t do that anymore and you’re just plain not required to get a new license when you update your address. You can but it’s going to cost you $26 or something like that. Relevant to this situation, however, is that the correlation between your current residence and the address on your license is now somewhat weak, and Quality Inn should not be using that as their basis for determining where you live.
Again, my hotel does not do this, but to be honest there are many times when I wish we do. Locals can be the worst guests. And employees, frankly, get tired of them. Management gets tired pouring money into repairs.
And again!!!! many places make exceptions for true emergencies.
The next time you’re at a hotel and you complain about the pounding music at 3 AM, the shouting fight 3 doors down, the shrieked conversation outside your window at 2 AM remember: these are most likely locals.
A no-locals policy would not work in Hawaii. Hotels here always offer special, low “kamaaina” rates. Kamaaina literally means “native” in Hawaiian but is used for anyone with a local ID. A lot of residents like to go for a weekend getaway at a decent hotel.
Ditto here in Arizona. During the summer a lot of the resorts have trouble getting enough guests to cover fixed costs so they will offer rooms ridiculously cheap to locals in the hope you will also avail yourself of the restaurant, massages, golf, etc. in kind of a movie theater tickets vs. snack bar prices way.
Pro tip: If you do go golfing be off the links by 8am.
California doesn’t even do that. When you move, you can get a paper card from the DMV that has spaces for you to write your name and new address. Then you just stick that in your wallet, and whenever you have occasion to show your license, you are supposed to show that with it.
I stayed locally (Comfort Inn chain) when my house was getting fumigated. No problem. My daughter volunteers for the Red Cross and books people who have lost their homes into hotels all the time, but they may have a contract with them.
Motels that have had a lot of trouble with locals may have a policy restricting renting rooms to them. Other places with less trouble or a higher tolerance may not.
Ones that do have the policy may have an exception policy that the front desk person may or may not have the authority to invoke at 2:00 am.
Travelled back to my home town a few years ago, flew into a regional airport not too far from my town. “It’s good to be home,” I quipped to the clerk at the car rental booth. Her radar immediately pinged. “You’re local? I can’t rent to you if you’re local.” I explained that I was visiting from out of state and that I still had a 40-minute drive ahead of me before I was truly home. She accepted that and the rental moved forward.
Turns out that they had trouble with locals renting cars, and almost immediately reporting them as stolen. They were leaving the airport and driving them straight to a chop-shop.
