If you think hotels will never stoop to the level of airlines — charging extra for anything that isn’t bolted down — maybe you’ve never heard of easyHotel.
Sure, rooms at this cut-rate European hotel chain are cheap (about $35 a night), but if you need anything extra, like maid service, a fresh towel or a TV, it’ll cost you. Add it all up, and your stay costs closer to $50 a night, which is less of a bargain.
American hotels are watching easyHotel carefully. They’re no strangers to fees, but charging guests for housekeeping and TVs definitely crosses a line. Many are hoping customers will buy it.
Do we really want to live in an a la carte world?
It’s enough to deal with mandatory tips, room safe fees and concierge fees. But towels TV sets Room service What’s next, a fee for a bed?
Inns are becoming like airlines, but we can do something about it.
One of the worst airline-isms the hotel industry has copied involves nonrefundable rooms, and specifically the disclosure of its terms. William Chiles booked a room in Miami recently through an online travel agency and had to cancel. “Silly me,” he says. “I did not realize, in the fine print, that it was classified as nonrefundable.” Neither the hotel, nor the online agency, offered him any hope of refund, even though he canceled well in advance of his visit.
Like airlines, hotels have increased the number of nonrefundable rooms while at the same time apparently decreasing the disclosure of these critically important conditions. All the while, hotel guests have seemed to go along with these new, customer-unfriendly conditions.
Andrea Gleason was infuriated when she checked out of the Monte Carlo Las Vegas Resort and Casino recently. The hotel had added a $9.50-a-day “resort fee” for, among other things, the use of a pool. “This charge is made even when booking a complimentary room through the slot clubs,” she says. “Some of the agents will inform you of the fee at the time of booking, but not all of them. This makes the complimentary room not so complimentary.”
The hotel denies the fee is for the use of the pool, but says it covers bottled water, newspapers, Internet access and fitness-center access.
Now, asking guests to pay extra for the pool makes about as much sense as selling an airline seat that doesn’t include a piece of checked luggage. Which is to say, none at all.
Just like some low-cost airlines, many hotels that used to offer free bottles of water and other refreshments to their guests now have “unbundled” that amenity. And those bottles will cost you.
Worse, some hotels aren’t exactly up front about it and charge you in a deceptive way. Traci Fox, a college instructor in Philadelphia, was at a casino in Connecticut when she saw a few bottles and snacks on the dresser. That’s when she noticed the price and the sensors. “You get charged when you lift an item,” she said. “Dirty pool. I bet they just sit there and pray for you to stumble in drunk one night.”
Margaret Juergensmeyer, a biosafety officer from Chicago, remembers one Washington, D.C., hotel that turned off the heat during a cold snap in May. “My room, which had ripped carpet, torn wallpaper, and cigarette burns in the furniture — not what I expected for $225 a night — was warmer than being outdoors, but not much,” she said.
Unlike airlines, we have a choice in the hotel we stay in. We’re not down to two or three big players. Here’s what that means to you: It’s still possible to walk away from a hotel that isn’t treating you right.
Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. You can read more travel tips on his blog, www.elliott.org or e-mail him at celliott@ngs.org.
&Copy; 2010 Christopher Elliott/Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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