…He was nickel & dimed to death at the Swissotel Chicago.
We’ve been to many high end hotels over the years. And $250 a night is actually on the low end for a luxury hotel . But man, this place nails you for every little thing.
$10 per day for internet.
$15 per day, per person to use their dinky little pool.
$52 per day to park, even for guests.
$2.00 plus 6 cents a minute for each LOCAL phone call!
The mini-bar fridge had an internal scale system. If you even move something in it you automatically get billed. I got tagged $104 for Heinekens I didn’t drink, only moved them out of the way to get to a $4 ten ounce soda.
We bought a bottle of wine at the restaurant and on top of the exorbitant price they wanted $8 to open the sucker.
They don’t let guests use the luggage carts, and I was confronted by security when I tried. They only let the employees use them who of course has his hand out for a tip.
Jeebus Kripes. I’ve been to many high end hotels and never got gouged quite the same as this. I’m surprised I didn’t have to pay a fee every time I flushed the toilet. Then again, I haven’t seen my credit card statement yet. Maybe there’s a turd tax!
I have stayed at the Swissotel in both Berlin and Amsterdam—I thought the Berlin property was exceptional and almost too upscale for my tastes, (I got an AMAZING deal on my stay thru Priceline or Hotwire) but the A’Dam Swissotel was WAY overpriced (I think it was close to $300 per night, which was a joke; I was staying with a friend and he arranged the reservation without asking me) and though the central location was great, the overall stay was not nearly worth what I paid…
Yep, the same thing that happened to you also happened to me. The Swisshotel in Chicago charged me like $71 for opening the fucking fridge in the room and storing some food in it. It detected the movement of the pre-stocked Coke cans and sent a RED ALERT message to the front desk to charge me up the ass for them. What a horrible place.
Pretty standard ripoff. I stayed at a resort once which wanted $20 a day to park - and it was in Palm Springs, in the middle of the frickin’d desert, with nothing around within five miles. Plus I heard that some poor guy paid $18 for a porkchop for breakfast.
In my experience, the more expensive a hotel room, the less you get with it. A $75 hotel room probably includes a continental breakfast and free internet, but a $250 room won’t.
I think a lot of hotels are nickel and diming like that to game the travel sites. They drive down the base price of the room to look good on Expedia or Priceline and make it up by charging out the ass for parking, the gym, internet, etc.
A lot of those hotels can get away with those sorts of nickel-and-dime charges because they cater to business travelers who can expense them. I can’t expense that stuff and all I want is a clean bed and bathroom, so I tend to stay in the $75-a-night (or cheaper) hotels.
Also, while a business traveler may have a ceiling on how much can be reimbursed for the hotel itself, other necessary expenses (like internet) may not apply to that ceiling.
This is the case in our company - the booking system allows up to a set rate per night, but we can then also claim for parking, internet and meals as extras.
I should have titled it pkbites RIP… and then started the thread …ped off. Which is still pkbites ripped off.
No continental breakfast either. 2 eggs. bacon, fruit, and 2 pieces of toast was $27. I kid you not!
I recently stayed at the Biltmore Coral Gables with my mom. After having dinner at a friend’s house, we brought back half of the Key Lime pie our host had made for us. Of course, there was no room in the mini-fridge to store it with all the overpriced booze and soda in there, so I removed them.
The following day, I brought back some snacks and drinks from Fresh Market and called guest services to ask them to remove the drinks and alcohol in the mini fridge, so I could use it for my health food. They wanted to charge $30 just to empty the fridge. Thanks, but no thanks. We ended up with a foam cooler of ice as an alternative, which does not work all that well for key lime pie. :mad:
Some hotels will loan you a small refrigerator for free, if you need it for something like infant formula or medicine. Sometimes all you need to is just to ask for one, without needing it for medication or formula. Friends of my family always travel with their own food (picky eaters) so they claim that they need it for medication.
Last place I stayed like this, a guy in the lobby told me about free wifi at the little restaurant next door. So I ate my meals there while doing my online stuff. I mentioned it to a few people and saw the guy who gave me the heads up telling others. Maybe the hotel noticed as well.
If you add small, heavy items to the fridge, like fishing weights or pennies, can you get the hotel to pay you?
On a related note, I’d like to mail this box full of helium baloons.