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Aquatic Giraffe posted:In my hotel experience, the nicer the hotel the less likely it'll be to have free wifi. Holiday Inn in bumfuck nowhere? Free reliable wifi with no password. Fancy resort hotel? Pay out the rear end for the shittiest internet possible. Yeah, that's been my experience too. Except any hotel near a convention centre: they will charge silly amounts for sure.
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May 23, 2015 23:45
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I think Marriott or Holiday Inn or some chain got into some poo poo with the government recently because they were found to be blocking signals in the hotel so that people would be faced to pay their insane wifi prices instead of using their own mobile hotspot.
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May 24, 2015 02:34
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As a business traveler, let me into a little secret. Most businesses don't need a receipt for expenses less than $20. Look at hotel prices and . . . all of a sudden things make a lot more sense.
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May 24, 2015 06:06
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Shbobdb posted:As a business traveler, let me into a little secret. Most businesses don't need a receipt for expenses less than $20. Look at hotel prices and . . . all of a sudden things make a lot more sense. Thats a secret to nobody. Although if 20 is all they'll turn a blind eye to your company is pretty lovely, that might be something worth keeping secret.
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May 24, 2015 08:35
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Shbobdb posted:As a business traveler, let me into a little secret. Most businesses don't need a receipt for expenses less than $20. Look at hotel prices and . . . all of a sudden things make a lot more sense. Oh gently caress, I travel for business extremely rarely (and I'm self-employed anyway), so I never considered that. So it's basically just rip-off artistry that most hotels get away with because most of their clientele doesn't care? That's so, so greasy. Though, looking at the tourist-focused hotels vs. generic business-focused hotels, this does line up 100%.
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May 24, 2015 09:50
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I dunno about that. Most branded hotels chose which chains give WiFi for free and which won't. Like for IHG all Holiday Inn Express properties give it for free, but Holiday Inn doesn't. Same with Marriott and their select service and full service brands. Location doesn't really matter. There's select service IHG and Marriott properties in times square that give free WiFi while the big full service properties charge.
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May 24, 2015 12:27
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Original_Z posted:I think Marriott or Holiday Inn or some chain got into some poo poo with the government recently because they were found to be blocking signals in the hotel so that people would be faced to pay their insane wifi prices instead of using their own mobile hotspot. Marriott was accused of this. I think all WiFi should be free, cause it's a utility that should be built into the rate like electric and housekeeping. Paying for WiFi is dumb. My hotel charges for WiFi.
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May 24, 2015 12:28
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Stayed at a La Quinta on Saturday that was surprisingly nice, except the 500 soccer kids there being all crazy and loud. I used some advice from this thread and told them I was in town on business with Garmin (whose HQ was a couple blocks away) and got about 15% off. They said it would normally be more, but with the holiday weekend that was the best they could do
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May 25, 2015 16:35
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Stayed at a hotel last weekend. Immediately after check in, I hear kids running up and down the hall. Non-loving-stop, hard enough that the hair dryer in the bathroom kept falling out of its cradle. Several complaints to the front desk and asking for a room change later, I'm told the GM has to approve a room change. GM shows up, says "you've been in the room too long to change rooms", then tells me the room above mine is the room the assistant manager and her kids live in (I'd been dealing with the asst mgr earlier). There were 3 cars in the parking lot when I checked in, and 5 when I got back from dinner around 9, in a 3 story with over 200 rooms. Why the gently caress couldn't they just move me  Made a corporate complaint, asked them NOT to have the hotel call me because I was so pissed off... and the hotel has been calling me for several days, then started emailing me asking me to retract the complaint. They also made a copy of my drivers license and debit card without asking me, so I wound up cancelling the card immediately. Bedroom window was also wide open at check-in, the room reeked of cigarettes and chemicals (non-smoking room), and of course, the wifi didn't work (it showed an SSID, but I could never get an IP - my laptop does everything except 802.11n, so I figure they had their access points forced to accept only 802.11n connections). Bonus points is all the furniture, the ancient CRT TV, and the fridge had the name of the hotel spray painted on them, with no outlet I could find outside of the bathroom available to charge my phone or laptop. This wasn't some ghetto place in the middle of nowhere either, it was a (lower end) $60/night Wyndham property.
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May 25, 2015 17:43
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Sounds like you got what you paid for, or are in a place where poo poo is super cheap. I haven't come across anything decent that could be called a full-on hotel (private bathroom, etc.) for anything close to $60/night in the developed world, or indeed many places in the developing world.
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May 25, 2015 18:12
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Yeah, you had me until the $60 a night part. Did you check the online reviews? Also did you receive a survey from the hotel after? Those surveys are super loving important to hotels and they poo poo themselves when they get really bad ones. Romes128 fucked around with this message at 03:14 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 03:05
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Romes128 posted:Yeah, you had me until the $60 a night part. Did you check the online reviews? Yeah I was right along with the outrage until that part. That's about what I'd expect of a $60 dollar property, really. Also, as a hotel that has been top of it's brand (out of over 1000 other hotels) for almost a year, those surveys are SUPER important. Like you would not even believe - one bad survey can ruin an entire month. If you are staying at a hotel, make sure they get your email address. The hotel direct wont send you any annoying crap but the survey you'll get is worth it's digital weight in gold. If you have a complaint or issue and the manager sees your email is in the system you are much more likely to get a higher discount or a better resolution just to make you happy. Hell, I've preemptively given discounts to guests without them asking if the desk informs me they had a minor complaint and I noticed their email is in the system. To make sure you get the email, ask the hotel to email you a confirmation when you make the reservation. some texas redneck posted:They also made a copy of my drivers license and debit card without asking me, so I wound up cancelling the card immediately. Copying the drivers license isn't a huge deal. We do that here if a guest wants to pay cash. It's just added insurance for us incase we need to call the cops over you bilking out with one of our TVs or something. Copying the card itself though is a bit sketchy. I don't know why they'd need that outside of it being a card authorized from another person and even then that's weeeeird. Fun Fact: What's the craziest excuse I've had from a guest for stealing an item? If a guest happens to take a small (small being not the TV or refrigerator/microwave) item or two from the room at checkout, our general procedure is to call them up. We politely mention that our housekeepers noticed an object was missing and ask If the guest could bring the "misplaced" item back. This would amount to either excuses or denial. The best excuse I ever had was from a woman who staid in our motel with her young son - she happened to steal the comforter. Her reason? "My son threw up on it and I was just taking it to be dry-cleaned!" She brought it back immediately, vomit free coincidentally  Thefts are a rarity nowadays though, ever since we put up signs in the room detailing the cost we charge if a guest wants to "purchase" anything in the room. We might get one or two complaints a month from picky people outraged at how tacky it seems, but it has made our yearly losses borderline nonexistent. Absolutely worth it. Adequate Panther posted:Stayed at a La Quinta on Saturday that was surprisingly nice, except the 500 soccer kids there being all crazy and loud. That sounds about right for the weekend, you did good. Even in slower areas, it's become a habit to increase weekend rates just because...well, everyone does it. It's normally only during summertime though, I don't often see hotels keep those rates up outside of the peak seasons. And kid's sports teams are the absolute worst. Some of the things those kids do to rooms defy belief. It's even worse when your facility has a bar and the parents all leave the kids unsupervised to go get boozed up. I'm normally a patient guy, but the third time I have to break up a Frisbee session in the hallways, or remove all the hotel's potted plants from the elevators again, I reach my limit. Romes128 posted:I think all WiFi should be free, cause it's a utility that should be built into the rate like electric and housekeeping. Paying for WiFi is dumb. Mine doesn't, and I agree completely. It's something that should just be expected of every hotel, outside of the lowest brands. I mean, I've checked in guests that couldn't speak English and required me butchering another language to get them in. And yet they all still know how to say "Wi-Fi password?" at the end. Guests expect it and I can't imagine having to tell someone that our facility charges for that.
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May 26, 2015 06:41
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That Jerk Steve posted:Yeah I was right along with the outrage until that part. That's about what I'd expect of a $60 dollar property, really. Yeah, to drive it home, those surveys are super important to hotels. The company that owns whatever brand will come down hard on the hotel if their internal scores fall below a certain number. It's different for every brand. If it gets bad enough, the company will pull the name from the hotel. If it's a franchised hotel, and the name gets pulled, the owners usually cut their losses and fire everyone and sell the hotel. It takes months and months of bad scores, but it happens. Usually when you see a property change from one brand to another, either the franchise agreement was up, or the hotel lost its flag. It's expensive as hell to get a franchise agreement with the major hotel companies, like hundreds of thousands of dollars. My previous company sent me to one of their failing franchise hotels to help get the scores up. Luckily we got out, but it took more than a year and a ton of convincing to the higher ups that we'll do it. It was nerve-racking. A failing month can really screw over the hotel. And my bonus. I want my bonuses. I've been told copying a credit card is a no-no according to whatever the law is called when it comes to credit card privacy. I can't remember the acronym. But a lot of hotels still do it, so I dunno. That Jerk Steve posted:
The plants thing is hilarious. And agreed, kids sports teams are the worst. Or god forbid you get a tour bus full of seniors who call the front desk every 5 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the TV or use the HVAC unit.
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May 26, 2015 07:18
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PT6A posted:Sounds like you got what you paid for, or are in a place where poo poo is super cheap. I haven't come across anything decent that could be called a full-on hotel (private bathroom, etc.) for anything close to $60/night in the developed world, or indeed many places in the developing world. it is about what i pay for buisness hotels in japan. They have all been clean and comfortable.
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May 26, 2015 08:57
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PT6A posted:Sounds like you got what you paid for, or are in a place where poo poo is super cheap. I haven't come across anything decent that could be called a full-on hotel (private bathroom, etc.) for anything close to $60/night in the developed world, or indeed many places in the developing world. I think $60 is a pretty attainable price if you book smartly in most places in the world, for a basic no-frills single room en-suite.
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May 26, 2015 09:57
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Jeza posted:I think $60 is a pretty attainable price if you book smartly in most places in the world, for a basic no-frills single room en-suite. Just checked for my home city of Calgary, for some random date in June: nothing is available for under $60/night. Not even a bad hotel in a terrible area.
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May 26, 2015 10:23
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PT6A posted:Just checked for my home city of Calgary, for some random date in June: nothing is available for under $60/night. Not even a bad hotel in a terrible area. A week before peak tourist season will probably present a struggle. Searching a few months down the line I can find plenty of places for ~$60, and that's from booking.com which won't exactly be the best. I did qualify my statement with "book smartly". Deals and negotiation means it's mostly possible to get a room for between ~$60-70 most places in the world. If it's possible in London, it's possible most places.
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May 26, 2015 10:38
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That Jerk Steve posted:Thefts are a rarity nowadays though, ever since we put up signs in the room detailing the cost we charge if a guest wants to "purchase" anything in the room. We might get one or two complaints a month from picky people outraged at how tacky it seems, but it has made our yearly losses borderline nonexistent. Absolutely worth it.
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May 26, 2015 13:55
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Jeza posted:I think $60 is a pretty attainable price if you book smartly in most places in the world, for a basic no-frills single room en-suite. Sure you can find a place that charges only $60 a night. But it'll be like the place some texas redneck stayed at.
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May 26, 2015 13:56
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Thoguh posted:Sure you can find a place that charges only $60 a night. But it'll be like the place some texas redneck stayed at. No argument from me, but I'd say you're more likely to be met with apathy than outright standoffishness. Sounds more like he/she was just unlucky. I've run from $2 hostels up to $500 hotels so I've had my fair share of good and bad. Even at lower price points, places are often willing for you to switch rooms, have working wifi, and provide basic courtesy. If you have a problem, an expensive hotel full of shitheels will be worse than a cheap one with staff who are happy to bend over backwards
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May 26, 2015 14:14
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I enjoyed this thread, thank you all for sharing. My 2 cents on the 60$/night price being low is surprise, but then I remembered we almost never got a cheap and good hotel room when I was in California years ago. From a non-US perspective, American hotels are maybe a little expensive? I've had perfectly fine rooms all over europe for less, including major cities. My most recent bad hotel experience was our own drat fault. I was going to Japan with a friend and I found a hotel online for our first two days in tokyo and told my friend to book it, but he booked the wrong one. So we arrive after a long flight at our hotel, only to be told that we have no reservation there. They let us borrow their wifi and we quickly discover our mistake, apologize and head towards our surprise dwelling. This place turns out to be an "internet cafe": No rooms, just cubicles with only enough room for a japanese style mattress. No sheets, no blankets, no nothing. No A/C even! Hell, not even any computers or wifi? Only two windows in the entire place, 5 floors high but with very low ceilings and carpeted from top to bottom. Two shared toilets for around 50 cubicles. Luckily, we had the place almost to ourselves. Aside from when we checked in, we never saw another employee there for the duration of our two nights. I suspect these places operate maybe more at night, when people are out and can't get home because the metro has stopped running for the night and they just need a place to crash. Still, it was definately the weirdest place I've ever been in. Another place was in a national park/jungle on Borneo. So many bugs. No windows, just frayed mosquitto netting. Toilets outside at the edge of the jungle with the lights on all night. I went out to pee one night, but the amount of wild life attracted to the only light source for miles was absolutely insane. The walls were almost black with all sorts of creepy crawlies, huge moths fluttering around the light bulb, aargh, I'm terrible with bugs so I hightailed it outta there and back to bed as fast as I could. You always feel a bit like a clown carrying around a bug net in your pack until you suddenly end up in a situation where, if you're a bugophobe like me, a good nights sleep depends on it. On Koh Tao in Thailand about two years ago I had a local goon help me with finding a good and non-partying hotel and he found just about the perfect one. Honestly, it was fantastic and the best place we stayed the entire month we were there... Unfortunatly, the family living next door had 4-5 cocks who really enjoyed walking around the building and crowing at the top of their feathered bastard lungs from 5 in the morning till 10. I had food poisoning and really needed to sleep, It was something awful alright.
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May 26, 2015 17:24
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PT6A posted:Sounds like you got what you paid for, or are in a place where poo poo is super cheap. I haven't come across anything decent that could be called a full-on hotel (private bathroom, etc.) for anything close to $60/night in the developed world, or indeed many places in the developing world. In the non-urban US in a non-touristy area, you can get a passable hotel for $60. By passable, I mean clean, no visible prostitution or other vice, no pests, a decent mattress, and yes your very own bathroom. It won't be deluxe, but it will be fine. You'll have to have booked well in advance or find a place where they have low occupancy at like 9PM in an area with several hotels. Until quite recently, I had a niceish hotel in San Francisco which was $100 in the winter with free parking (worth 40bucks in sf) if I booked a month in advance. Then apparently tripadvisor discovered it and now they want 220+. Some hotels are also just way undermarket because they do a pisspoor job of marketing.
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May 26, 2015 17:50
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nm posted:In the non-urban US in a non-touristy area, you can get a passable hotel for $60. By passable, I mean clean, no visible prostitution or other vice, no pests, a decent mattress, and yes your very own bathroom. It won't be deluxe, but it will be fine. You'll have to have booked well in advance or find a place where they have low occupancy at like 9PM in an area with several hotels. New hotels (like brand new, opened a month ago) will have lower rates than anyone around them, because nobody knows they're there and and don't have enough base business to generate income (like contacts, group business, tour companies, etc). They'll make up their low revenue with high occupancy. This is what almost all hotels do in the winter cause tourist season is spring, summer, and early fall. Only exceptions being holidays like New Years Eve. My view on rates are skewed as gently caress, because NYC is expensive as hell when it comes to hotels. Decent hotels will almost never go below $129.
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May 26, 2015 19:07
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That Jerk Steve posted:And kid's sports teams are the absolute worst. Some of the things those kids do to rooms defy belief. It's even worse when your facility has a bar and the parents all leave the kids unsupervised to go get boozed up. I'm normally a patient guy, but the third time I have to break up a Frisbee session in the hallways, or remove all the hotel's potted plants from the elevators again, I reach my limit. I take a student group to Washington, D.C. every year (which BTW is always polite and quiet) and man, I've run into some doozies in our hotel. The two best were both groups of foreign students, one from the Mideast and one from Mexico. Both groups were loving abominable, straight-up telling their chaperones to gently caress off, throwing poo poo around in the hallway, etc. The Mideast group dragged an entire mattress into the stairwell, laid it on the stairs, and then poured gallons and gallons of water on it to make it incredibly heavy. Mexican kids were making snowballs around rocks and throwing them at their chaperones and passing cars. Just insane, INSANE poo poo, things I would have put a kid on a plane back home immediately for. Finally I just had to ask, "What the gently caress is going on here?!?!" The Egyptian group's chaperones told me all the kids in their group were the children of oil multimillionaires and they had been specifically told they could not correct the kids or say no to anything. When I asked why the gently caress they would put up with that I was told "We are making $30,000 each to do this for 4 days." Oh. Well then. The Mexican group told me the same thing about their kids and discipline, but their reason was "The parents of all these children are high up in the cartels and if we correct them we will be killed on our return home." 
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May 27, 2015 13:34
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prinneh posted:I enjoyed this thread, thank you all for sharing. I've been looking at some B&Bs in western europe for an upcoming trip and I get thrown off when some of them with decent reviews are only like 27 Euro/person a night. My immediate thought is "what the gently caress is wrong with this place" when I see rates below around $90/night, no matter the area.
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May 27, 2015 16:43
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Thoguh posted:I've been looking at some B&Bs in western europe for an upcoming trip and I get thrown off when some of them with decent reviews are only like 27 Euro/person a night. My immediate thought is "what the gently caress is wrong with this place" when I see rates below around $90/night, no matter the area. My understanding is that B&Bs tend to be considered budget accommodations in many parts of Europe while in the US they tend to be premium offerings. Hence the confusion on travel boards when Europeans say they want to travel the US cheaply, staying at hostels and B&Bs.
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May 27, 2015 17:51
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Powerlurker posted:My understanding is that B&Bs tend to be considered budget accommodations in many parts of Europe while in the US they tend to be premium offerings. Hence the confusion on travel boards when Europeans say they want to travel the US cheaply, staying at hostels and B&Bs. This sounds true, when I was in Ireland last year I splurged and got a £40/night B&B with a huge room and a great breakfast, but normally I'd just stay in private rooms in hostels for less.
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May 27, 2015 18:00
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In Britain, traditionally, B&B's are actual houses that the owner has split up into separate rooms and rents out. Some of them are nice and well kept. Others are shitholes and have 1960s/70s decor because that was like the boom period for seaside holidays or something. B&B's only really exsist in holiday towns or seaside resorts. In easier terms, they are one step above hostels but a step below budget chain hotels. Example:   Blackpool is like the world capital of B&B's. By the "breakfast" part of B&B's usually means a "full English" and some tea and toast in some old woman's living room.
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May 27, 2015 20:50
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Powerlurker posted:My understanding is that B&Bs tend to be considered budget accommodations in many parts of Europe while in the US they tend to be premium offerings. Hence the confusion on travel boards when Europeans say they want to travel the US cheaply, staying at hostels and B&Bs. reformed bad troll posted:In Britain, traditionally, B&B's are actual houses that the owner has split up into separate rooms and rents out. Some of them are nice and well kept. Others are shitholes and have 1960s/70s decor because that was like the boom period for seaside holidays or something. B&B's only really exsist in holiday towns or seaside resorts. Now those prices make a lot more sense. The really cheap price and per person rates definitely gave off a "basically a hostel" vibe.
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May 27, 2015 21:57
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reformed bad troll posted:In Britain, traditionally, B&B's are actual houses that the owner has split up into separate rooms and rents out. Some of them are nice and well kept. Others are shitholes and have 1960s/70s decor because that was like the boom period for seaside holidays or something. B&B's only really exsist in holiday towns or seaside resorts. For a US comparison, Blackpool is, in terms of price and ambiance, the British equivalent of the Jersey Shore.
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May 28, 2015 00:09
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I stayed at a hotel in SF that had "luxury eco-foam" mattresses and pillows. Turns out they were magnificent static electricity generators and if I moved even a micron I could feel every hair on my body clinging to the sheets. It was a strange and horrid experience to be enveloped in a whole-body electric field of misery.
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May 28, 2015 00:53
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Mine would have to be a work trip involving a stay at a Chinese built and run hotel in Freetown, Sierra Leone, called the Bintumani about 3 years ago. TL/DR: Hotel was a shithole run into ground by a nasty management who were abusive to the locals. Padded out with various mildly amusing anecdotes. We landed around 1am in the morning - had to get on a ricketty old 1960s era bus and then a ferry across the river (the Soviet era helicopter service had been recently grounded due to "almost" crashing). We finally got to the hotel around 3am, to find that they claimed to have absolutely no record of our booking. We had the paperwork and this was just an attempt by them to get us to pay in cash in full up front ($150 a night - but then modern amenities in Freetown are expensive). They also tried to get us to pay (again) for a group from our organisation who stayed a few months ago (again, we had the paperwork and they had paid in full upon leaving). If I was there alone I would have fallen for this poo poo and paid up. Luckily I went on this trip with a more experienced colleague - a (usually nice) middle aged Nigerian lady. It was on this trip I discovered she could be an absolutely loving terrifying force of nature when needed. She had no time for their bullshit - bulldozing through all their objections and publically berating the manager in the lobby for trying to con us. We then went to our rooms - one of the porters insisted on carrying our luggage (I normally find that sort of thing embarassing, but here you kind of have to let them do it - the tips received make up majority of their income). However after getting there another porter angrily accosting me, demanding to know why I had let the other guy take my luggage, as he was supposed to be handling all of the luggage that night. Using my best fake posh English accent I politely noted that he was nowhere to be seen and the other guy had just picked it up without asking - how was I supposed to know it was his job? He began to get angrier and insisted that I should have asked for him by name (which he had not mentioned yet). At that point the other porter and the Manager came running back and started yelling at him in a language I didn't recognise, before physically dragging him off. I just shut (and locked) my door until they went away. The hotel food was mostly at Chinese business travellers, and even by that standard was pretty piss poor - but again, this was Freetown so you expect that sort of thing. After the first morning we resolved to avoid hotel food and eat locally - great decision as streetfood was excellent - some of best fried Catfish I have ever had, and local stews/curries were excellent. The room was furnished in what I can only assume to be the rejects and cast offs of Chinese industry. The fridge door literally fell off when opened. The TV had exposed wiring and played only 3 channels - one sports, one local music channel, and a third which appeared to be some kind of Chinese State TV - everytime I turned it on it seemed to show military parades. Bathroom smelt of piss, bedsheets were frayed and covered in blood. A $20 "fee" at the front desk was required to get it cleaned/them changed. Water was working consistently, and power only went out a few times (power grid in Freetown is erratic, so not hotel's fault really). Clearly by the second night the front desk had told the local prostitutes that a Western guy was staying in this room - I had 3 knock on my door within a single hour. Naturally turned them all away (I do not have a death wish). One actually sat outside for 30minutes before leaving. It took them 4 more nights to finally get the message. I spoke to the cleaning staff the next day, who confirmed the hotel managers had a relationship with the local gangs to provide prostitutes and anything else (!?!) guests wanted. Incidentally the cleaners were by far the nicest people there - had a long chat with one and bought her lunch nearby - she mentioned how it had been different when she had worked at other hotels - which were run by the Lebanese (the traditional middle class in Sierra Leone) who had ploughed the money back into the local community. She complained this was not the case with the Chinese management, who were only interested in sending dollars back home, and she claimed were verbally and physically abusive to the local staff. As I've mentioned though - this was in Freetown, Sierra Leone, one of poorest countries in the world - so whilst not up to international standards it was one of the better options here, and you adjust your expectations accordingly. It was relatively safe (the guards with AK-74s at the front gate saw to that) and somewhere to put your head down at night. Can't really ask for much more in that context. The work trip itself was an absolute blast. Nigerian boss and I bonded well in the bar (when we were able to drink without the peddlers interrupting us) and watched the African Cup of Nations together. Tigey fucked around with this message at 01:13 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 01:09
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I stayed in a hotel in Burma/Myanmar - most of the hotels there are Chinese funded as well, with every electrical appliance being a weird Chinese counterfeit knock-off you've never heard of. Penasenic TVs, that sort of thing. My favourite thing was the skull and crossbones sign next to the taps with the warning WATER IS POISON, translated into half a dozen other languages which I assume were as mangled as the English. I assume they were saying that the water from the taps wasn't safe to drink, rather than some sort of ironic commentary on the human races tendancy to suck up natures resources which in turn will lead to its own inevitable demise, but this was Burma and I couldn't be 100% sure.
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May 30, 2015 16:29
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reformed bad troll posted:In Britain, traditionally, B&B's are actual houses that the owner has split up into separate rooms and rents out. Some of them are nice and well kept. Others are shitholes and have 1960s/70s decor because that was like the boom period for seaside holidays or something. B&B's only really exsist in holiday towns or seaside resorts. I never stayed in a B&B in Blackpool. I feel like I'm missing out. When I went to the UK and Ireland, besides London (stayed at a hotel) and Dublin (stayed at trinity college dorm because it was holidays), nearly everywhere I stayed was a B&B. We just hired a car, drove until we were tired or found a place of interest, and just went to the tourist centre to look up a local B&B and crashed. So it was completely unplanned and unbooked. We always had the option of sleeping in the car I guess We went from London to Winchester, then Exeter, Tintagel, Bideford, Bath, Cheltonham, Nottingham, York, Stirling, Glascow, Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh. Then a plane to Dublin, hired another car, went to Killkenny, Waterford, Cork, Dingle, Kilkee, Galway and Trim, completely winging it with b&bs or whatever accommodation we could find at the last minute for a lowish price.
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May 30, 2015 19:52
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I stayed at some super hipster themed Hotel in Seattle called Hotel Max but the funny thing is that I mostly saw old people there. It was a nice place but I always felt like the guests were looking down on me as if I couldn't possibly afford a room there. I definitely think I was the only black person there that didn't work there.
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May 31, 2015 14:02
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Years ago I worked in a reservation call center for BestWestern. The worst part, other than the quota you had to meet (1 out of every 4 calls had to be a reservation, which you couldn't control when people needed to cancel a trip or were just asking if the pool was open. See, hotels in the chain knew they were paying to have us around so they'd transfer as many calls as they could to us. Cue us having to put people on hold to call the hotel direct for something as simple as "when is the pool open" and "what is the happy hour special tonight.") was the arguing over rates. We had the standard rate, AAA/AARP which was about 10 bucks less, and usually the Best Rate, maybe 15 less than standard, and Manager's Special, 20 max. Some people would call and demand the MR right off, but that was always booked first. Travel Agent rates were loving insane, like $20 a night, but because every time a travel agent called, they were insanely bitchy (this was right around the time Expedia and Hotels.com started up) that they never got any TA rates, because amazingly enough, places with huge conventions or touristy places never had a room open for $20 a night in peak season. I did work in international reservations too. Americans were pretty bad to deal with when it came to booking rooms in Europe; everyone wanted to be within a half mile of the Eiffel Tower or some poo poo, not realizing that those places were insanely expensive. Booking to South America was pretty fun though, because you could read off the room rate in whatever the local currency was, and then give the customer the USD rate which was always something insanely low like $30 a night. Sturgis Run was insane. It booked up the day the hotels opened reservations and there was no way to get in. What I remember most, other than dreading work everyday, and being screamed at, was hurricane season. We had a script we were never allowed to deviate from, and managers listened to the calls all the time. So I had to welcome every caller to every loving hotel, list off amenities, and generally sound like an idiot. Come hurricane season it was no different, and even when I asked my boss, she declined, saying that even people fleeing for their lives and needing a hotel safe for pets to stay at needed to know their loving rooms came with toasters and irons. My hotel search would only go 100 miles from whatever ZIP the customer gave me, so if every hotel was booked for 200 miles, he, and we, were hosed. I do remember a woman who called up demanding a suite at Disneyland, or close to. But it had to have a shuttle taking hotel guests to the park, which was common for any hotel near a theme park. Then she went on to explain she needed a two bedroom suite: one bedroom for her and her elderly mother and daughter, and then a separate room for her son, who had molested her daughter, and she wasn't sure her mother would be safe in the same room as him so he had to have his own room with an internal door that locked on the girls' side. Oh, and the rooms had to be wheelchair friendly with a roll-in shower. Now, some hotels let us book handicap-safe rooms but usually you had to call direct, and a two-room suite near Disney with that would usually be booked months in advance. Trying to explain this to a woman clearly at the end of her rope was not the highlight of my day. And not with reservations, but I do deliveries to hotels now, usually for conventions. I often get requests to take the packages right to the customer's room...which is a huge no-no. Hotels usually have a receiving dept for a reason. Being asked to leave a 12 box order at the front desk is always worth a laugh too. There is a relatively nice hotel I do weekly drops too, and it's a beautiful place, save the designer didn't realize people usually have cars, and cars need somewhere to park, and employees don't all take the bus. So the parking lot barely has enough spaces for the employees, and gods forbid there is a convention in town.
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May 31, 2015 15:47
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Cowslips Warren posted:
This is interesting just for the terminology used, our brands use the words "Best Available Rate" as the literal highest rate you'll possibly pay for a room. We've moved away from heavy discounting recently and I can confirm that OTAs are the worst goddamn things in the world, literal parasites that add nothing of value.
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Jun 1, 2015 19:53
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Cowslips Warren posted:There is a relatively nice hotel I do weekly drops too, and it's a beautiful place, save the designer didn't realize people usually have cars, and cars need somewhere to park, and employees don't all take the bus. So the parking lot barely has enough spaces for the employees, and gods forbid there is a convention in town. Brand new hotel I worked at had this issue. 112 rooms with average occupancy of 85% and only 60 car parks in rural, infrastructureless Australia. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays sucked. There was a private carpark for the live in manager, and some of our 2 bed room apartments had access to them. One night a guest had parked in the gm's spot. He came in and was drunk and asked me to glue a note to their car door. I said I would put it under their wiper but I wasn't going to glue something to a guests car. He goes on a rant pointing his finger in my face saying never to disobey him and if I don't do it I am fired. It was midnight, I hand him the keys and tell him to enjoy the rest of the night shift. I turned my phone off and emailed the the big boss telling him what happened when I got home. I had about 15 missed calls from the gm. He resigned the next day. My big boss said that he was treading on thin ice for a while, had screamed at a guests kid when he was drunk and that he had to scrape glue off the car when he came in early after seeing my email.
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Jun 3, 2015 16:35
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Big Willy Style posted:Brand new hotel I worked at had this issue. 112 rooms with average occupancy of 85% and only 60 car parks in rural, infrastructureless Australia. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays sucked. Some people are insane and I have no clue how they get a job at all, much less managing a hotel. There was a GM I knew of who had all the employees terrified of him. It was so bad they were scared to complain to the ownership company. He constantly made employees cry, yelled and berated them, and was drunk a lot. This went on for almost 7 years. He lasted maybe 3 weeks when we got a new regional who visited the properties weekly and saw him calling a Houseman a spic. That was about 3 years ago and the guy still can't find a job. The stories I heard about him were crazy. He yelled at guests babies for crying. He crashed into the parking lot gate while drunk. One of the weirdest things I remember was seeing an email the front desk manager sent him saying a guest though there as semen on the blanket or whatever. His response was next time the manager should personally check and make sure it's semen. How they verified it was up to them. What.
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Jun 4, 2015 09:37
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 20:42 |
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Question here, I reserved a room at the Hilton in DC for the week that includes July 4th, for just over $100 night. I'm not gonna show up and have the rate suddenly increase on me, am I? I booked directly.
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Jun 4, 2015 15:04
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