Donna Savic thinks she has a reservation at the Barcelo Maya Palace in Cancun, Mexico. She’s wrong. Orbitz booked her at a smaller, lower-rated hotel on the same complex. What now?
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hotel
If this isn’t a bait-and-switch, I don’t know what is. Jonathan Yarmis thought he was getting a $375 a night room rate at the Hotel Bauer in Venice, marked down from $537.
The Stanley Hotel is an historic resort in Estes Park, Colo., perhaps best known for inspiring Stephen King to write his horror masterpiece The Shining. And also, bedbugs — if Julie Kobayashi has her way. Get those images of Jack Nicholson typing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” out of your head. This spat reminded me of the recent exchange between Elizabeth Becton and McBee Strategic.
When a blizzard bears in on St. Cloud, Minn., Bonnie Polk asks a manager at the Ramada if she can cancel her reservation. Yes, she’s told. But a few days later, her credit card is billed and the hotel refuses to give her a refund. Is she out of luck?
Leslie Kelley’s room rate at InterContinental’s Barclay New York was an astonishingly low $129 a night. Astonishing, because the published room rate is $329 a night. And astonishing, because of the extras the hotel allegedly tried to add to her bill to make up for some of the lost revenue.
Jack Taras and his friends thought they would be checking in to the Occidental Grand hotel on the Dominican Republic’s postcard-perfect Eastern shore for Spring Break. But when Taras, a 19-year-old sophomore from Providence College, arrived at the resort, he was greeted with the hotel industry’s latest trick: he was walked down.
In his new memoir, “Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy,” Isadore Sharp describes how he built one of the hotel industry’s most successful and respected brands. But the book ends just as things start to get interesting: with a historic downturn in the lodging industry. I asked Sharp to pick up where the book left off.
Tired of being shocked by a barrage of fees and taxes on your hotel bill — everything from “resort” fees to taxes and convenience charges? Then you might want to travel abroad. John Humbach did, and learned that sometimes, the price your quoted for a hotel room can be the price you pay. To the penny.
Resort fees — those mandatory extra charges tacked on to your hotel bill to cover everything from beach towels to exercise rooms — are wrong on many levels. They’re nothing more than a sneaky way of raising your room rate. But until now, they’ve been in plain sight.
Social media is making headlines in the travel world today, whether it’s my colleague Anita Potter’s wall-to-wall coverage of Cruisecriticgate, or my recent observations about the growing influence of travel bloggers. Both of these stories raise an interesting question: What happens when the travelers who wield new-media power are wrong?
Donald Johnson accidentally reserves a nonrefundable room in Oklahoma City instead of Enid, Okla. Now his hotel wants to keep the money. Can he get a refund? Or is he stuck with a room he can’t use?
Christopher Elliott explains three hotel terms you need to know before your next hotel visit.
Kay Pratt’s rental car gets a ticket when she stays in a San Francisco hotel. Problem is, the car was under the care of the property’s valet services. Now she wants the $85 ticket refunded, but the hotel is stringing her along. Is she stuck with the ticket.?
Can a hotel refuse to honor your reservation because you won’t show your identification? That’s not a hypothetical question. Nick Cataldo contacted me earlier this week because he’d been denied a room at a Sleep Inn property in Birmingham, Ala. Here’s his story.
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