Remember the “America-only” provision in Expedia’s Best Price Guarantee? Earlier this week, I wrote about reader Craig Simpson’s efforts to persuade the online agency to adjust his rate at a hotel in Antigua after he found a lower rate on the property’s Web site.

But Expedia’s price warranty had a provision that “in the unlikely event that you find a lower rate on Expedia.com or on another U.S.-based website within 24 hours of booking with Expedia.com, we will credit or refund to you the difference.”

Not only did Expedia honor his rate after I got involved. Now it’s also also changed its policy.

Last night, I received the following note from Expedia:

Good news to report. We did a scrub of the terms and conditions for this aspect of the Best Price Guarantee and we decided to make a change.

We now cover a broader set of partners by changing the wording to “English-language” websites (rather than “US-based” websites).

Thanks again for bringing it to our attention. I’m pleased that we’ve been able to use this case as an opportunity to improve our policy and better serve our customers.

This is good news. And I’m very pleased that Expedia decided to revisit its price guarantee after Simpson’s case.

But does this mean I think these price guarantees are worth the virtual ink they’re printed on? I’m not sure I’d go that far — yet. Price guarantees are chock full of fine print, including strict limits on time, categories and vacation-package components.

The bottom line for customers is that making a claim on Expedia’s price guarantee is still difficult, but not as difficult as it was before.

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Oh, the things hotels will do for a good review.

It’s not enough to ask guests for a write-up on a popular site such as TripAdvisor or Yelp after they’ve checked out. Lately, some innkeepers have been pressuring their customers to say positive things online — in extreme cases, even before they’ve checked in.

Take what happened to Pam Stucky when she recently made a reservation at a small hotel in Scotland. Before she arrived, the owner sent her an e-mail soliciting a recommendation on TripAdvisor, even though she’d never been to the hotel.

“Two or four guests staying together can send two to four independent reviews,” the innkeeper wrote. “Different pseudonyms should be used.”

Stucky, a Seattle-based writer, was uncomfortable with the come-on.

“He hounded me to give him a positive review,” she said. When she arrived, the owner told her he was trying to get TripAdvisor to remove some of the less flattering write-ups about his property, while persuading guests — and future guests — to say nice things about his business. She says the hotel was “fine,” although her quarters were somewhat cramped.

At a time when properties from the largest chain hotel to a two-room bed-and-breakfast are engaging in a practice known as reputation management, the latest tools of the trade are you, their guests. Marc Karasu, the president of MeasuredUp.com, a reputation management company, says that hotels see the importance of encouraging happy customers to post their experiences online to enhance the hotels’ reputations and draw bookings. “But it’s easy to cross the line,” he added.

Where is the line? It depends on whom you ask. TripAdvisor, the largest and arguably most credible of the online review sites, takes a dim view of resorts that try to spin their own ratings. The site’s policy, which has been in effect since 2006, is clear:

“Property owners are welcome to encourage their guests to submit user reviews upon their return home, but they are not allowed to offer incentives, discounts, upgrades, or special treatment on current or future stays in exchange for reviews.” In other words, the reviews have to be legitimate and not motivated by any special offers.

“Whenever a traveler reports that they’ve been offered an incentive, we follow up with the property and, where appropriate, impose penalties,” said April Robb, a TripAdvisor spokeswoman. Those can include dropping a property on the site’s popularity index, excluding it from its Travelers’ Choice awards or posting a warning next to a listing that its reviews are “suspicious.”

Chris Brusznicki, the president of GamedayHousing.com, a sports vacation rental Web site, says that online reviews are so important to his business that he personally calls guests to ask them for a review on Yelp and Facebook. “Reviews are a huge differentiator for properties and help future guests become more comfortable with a rental decision,” he said.

But hotels that are on the up-and-up are reluctant to tell guests what to write online. Bill Chamberlain, who runs the Blue Heron Inn in Darien, Ga., says he takes a hands-off approach to the ratings. “We have never asked a guest to leave a positive review,” he said. “We simply ask them to post a review on either TripAdvisor or Bedandbreakfast.com in a thank-you note that is e-mailed to every guest a day or two after departure.” Although the property’s TripAdvisor reviews are mostly positive, one guest complained about lax housekeeping and security.

“There is no shortcut or marketing ploy that can do as much for you as good old-fashioned hard work and being truly passionate about providing genuine hospitality,” said Adele Gutman, the vice president of sales and marketing for HKHotels, which owns several properties in New York that have received high marks online.

And yet for every HKHotels or Blue Heron Inn, there are thousands more that believe the Internet can be manipulated to their ends. They don’t talk about their actions in public, but from time to time someone will post an anonymous comment on my travel blog, complaining about a tactic their competitors have used to boost their online ratings. Those strategies usually include asking someone connected with the hotel to post a fake review or offering free rooms or discounts to guests who write something nice.

It was only a matter of time before the backlash. In January, Brett Birman, a salesman with a New York finance company, launched a site called AvoiditNYC.com. He did it “because I have had bad experiences in the past and felt that my negative reviews on other Web sites, like Yelp and Citysearch, are often overlooked,” he told me. So far, AvoiditNYC.com is home to only one hotel review — of a small property on West 29th Street, in which a guest complains about the “dark and sketchy” neighborhood.

So what does all this mean to you? Obviously, hotel executives don’t think twice about leveraging guests like you to improve their online reputations. But if it’s happening to you, it’s probably happening to tens of thousands of other hotel guests every day. How many of them are being asked to endorse a hotel they’ve never stayed in, or have been offered a free night in exchange for a glowing write-up? And how many are doing it?

What does that say about the overall reliability of user-generated hotel reviews? Well, let’s just say that it doesn’t exactly enhance their reputation.

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Question: My fiance and I are going to Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate his six-month, “all clear” from cancer. I booked a four-star hotel on Priceline.com for our first two nights and when they revealed the hotel, it was actually a three-star on the hotel’s own Web site.

I called Priceline’s customer service immediately after booking to protest, but Priceline’s agents passed the buck back and forth for more than 30 minutes before telling me they could do nothing, and I would get an email in three to five business days. Thanks for nothing.

Not only have I not received a response after a week, but when I called again yesterday, they promised a resolution by 8 p.m. yesterday, and still nothing. I am looking for a refund and will never use Priceline again. Thanks so much for any help you can provide. — Stephanie Farrow, Charleston, S.C.

Answer: If the hotel considers itself a three-star, I can’t think of any reason for Priceline to contradict it.

Except, maybe to upgrade its price category and charge you a little more.

But let’s take a closer look. As you know, you “name your price” when buying a Priceline hotel. Meaning you place a bid for a category of hotel (in your case, a four-star property) but don’t get to pick the place. If your bid is accepted, Priceline assigns your reservation to a hotel of its choosing and charges your credit card immediately.

It’s unlikely that Priceline was artificially inflating its hotel ratings. Having followed Priceline’s hotel rating system since the beginning, I think it’s far likelier that the rating was out-of-date.

Either way, the representative you spoke with shouldn’t have brushed you off. Priceline needed to fix this star slip-up right away, offering either a refund or a change of hotel.

As imperfect as it is, the integrity of the star system is important to customers like you. Without an objective standard, Priceline could send anyone to a dump — and get away with it. (I’m not suggesting Priceline has any inferior hotels in its system; only that such behavior would be possible.)

If you want to be absolutely certain about the hotel you’re getting, try booking through a conventional online agency, a hotel Web site, or a real travel agent.

I can understand why you would want to call Priceline to fix this, but an e-mail works a lot better. You can enclose documentation, links to the hotel Web site, and if you’re getting the runaround, you can escalate your case to someone higher up the corporate food chain. The best place to start is right here, on its site.

I contacted Priceline on your behalf. It took another look at your case and discovered that the hotel you were staying at had been reclassified as a three-star property. “The customer service agent was not aware that the change was in the works,” a spokesman told me. Priceline refunded your entire hotel charge.

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Resort fees. Mandatory tips. Concierge surcharges.

If you’ve stayed at a hotel in the last few years, you’ve become accustomed — if not anesthetized — to these annoying extras. You expect them. You’re indifferent to them when they appear on your bill.

You shouldn’t be.

Consider these two facts: 2010 is shaping up to be another “down” year for the hotel industry. PKF Consulting forecasts that hotel occupancy will remain flat compared with 2009 and room rates will slide 1.5 percent. That means it’s a buyer’s market — actually, make that a beggar’s market — with hotels practically giving away their rooms.

At a time like this, no hotel manager in his right mind would add a new surcharge. If anything, they’d remove them to make us happy. “Upsetting guests is not worth it,” says Robert Mandelbaum, a PKF analyst.

All of which raises the following questions: Which hotel fees are still out there that shouldn’t be? Which ones should be euthanized? And how do you go about finishing them off?

Here are five hotel fees that must die.

Resort fees
These add-ons to your room bill started innocently enough. Resort guests complained that they were being nickel-and-dimed by extras for beach towels, umbrellas and the use of exercise facilities, among other things. So the properties rolled them all into a “resort fee” and made those amenities “free.” But along the way, the fee got horribly twisted by greed. First it became mandatory, so you no longer had a choice about using the amenities, or, more specifically, being charged for them. And then larger, urban hotels that didn’t have resort-like amenities, decided to copy it. Before long, resort fees had become an embarrassment to the hotel industry. Guests were being hit with the fees everywhere, causing their room charges to mushroom by $15, $20 or even $30 a night. Unacceptable. It’s time to give resort fees the heave-ho!

How to kill them: No hotel should charge a mandatory resort fee. Ever. If you book a room at a hotel that has one, and it’s clearly disclosed, you have few options. Trying to negotiate your way out of one when you check in is your best bet. However, few resort fees are adequately disclosed. If the hotel refuses to strike the surcharge from your bill, talk to your credit card company. I’ve dealt with several cases in which the fee was refunded directly by a credit card company.

Fees for furniture
The most common flavor of this fee is a surcharge for your safe. (Ironically, the hotel often doesn’t vouch for the safety of the items you store in one.) But that’s not the only item hotels ask you to pay extra for. Corinne McDermott, who runs a Web site about family travel, asked to be put in a room with a refrigerator on a recent visit to Quebec City. The hotel asked for an additional $10-a-day-fee. She said “no.” “We made room in the minibar and managed to fit our daughter’s milk and other snacks inside,” she says. “And we paid extra attention to the check-out receipt, to make sure there were no additional charges.” Billing a guest for furniture that’s already in the room is unconscionable. What’s next, a fee for your bed?

How to kill them: Always ask if there’s an additional fee when you make a special request, like a room with a refrigerator or any other amenity, such as a coffeemaker. (Don’t laugh — I’ve come across hotel guests who were charged extra for their coffeemakers.) If the answer is yes, you can always decline. If you find yourself staring down one of these surcharges at check-out, you should protest — first to the front-desk employee, then to a manager, and finally to your credit-card company.

Concierge, bellhop and housecleaning fees
Believe it or not, some hotels tack on a fee for their bellhops and concierges — two optional services that guests usually pay for with tips. At one hotel, motivational speaker Barry Maher was hit with a mandatory fee for bellhop service. “Never mind the fact that I rolled my own rollerbag to the room and never even saw a bellman,” he says. He also found a fee for housecleaning on his final bill. “Mentioning that I write and speak on customer service got the first fee removed,” he recalls. “But I think I just shrugged and shook my head over the housekeeping fee.” A lot of other hotel guests, do too. What if you don’t pay a fee for cleaning the room? Will they refuse to service your room? Come on.

How to kill them: Common sense is your most effective weapon against these unreasonable fees. Not only are they often improperly disclosed, but they also fly in the face of reason. The cost of your room should include housekeeping. Use of a concierge or bellhop should be optional, not mandatory. Explain to a manager that if they ever want your business again, the fees must be removed. Immediately.

Way-out-there fees
Never underestimate a hotel revenue manager’s creativity. Seriously, these employees sit around all day wondering how to make more money from us. George Webb, a blogger who has been traveling the world, recently encountered an “air conditioning fee” at an airport hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “You paid for it by the hour,” he remembers. “Plus, there was even a service charge and taxes on that fee, in addition to another service charge and tax on the price of the room.” Fees like this shouldn’t exist, and the only reason they do is that guests put up with them. Look, do you really think visitors will tolerate an un-air conditioned room at an airport hotel in Kuala Lumpur? Neither do I. These fees must die.

How to kill them: Logic. Some of these fees are so laughable that you just have to ask about them in order to have them removed.

Fees that ought to be illegal
Leslie Dykeman stayed at a Comfort Inn in Scottsdale, Ariz., and an Econo Lodge in Tempe, Ariz., recently. Both charged a $3 per day “energy fee.” “Mind you, I am from the northeast,” Dykeman added, “and in Scottsdale, I didn’t turn on the air conditioner once.” Some chain hotels were sued several years ago for adding energy fees to their bills, and backed down. But smaller, franchise properties still do it and get away with it. Surcharges like this ought to be illegal, and in some states they practically are. Adding $3 for electricity is outrageous. If these fees are allowed to stand, it can’t be long before we’re charged for pillows, blankets and toilet paper. Enough already.

How to kill them: Like many other nuisance fees, these kinds of surcharges are poorly disclosed. (And for good reason. They work better when they’re sprung on guests.) Given the surprise nature of these bizarre charges, negotiating them off your bill shouldn’t be too difficult.

Point is, at a time like this, you shouldn’t have to put up with any of these fees. A property charging mandatory resort fees, valet fees, safe fees or energy fees doesn’t just hate its customers — it probably also has a death wish.

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Question: I bought a hotel through Hotwire that I’d really rather not stay at. A few weeks ago, I requested a two-star property in Flint, Mich. Hotwire gave me a nonrefundable, nonchangeable room at a Days Inn property.

A friend of mine in the area told me about how bad that hotel is. They had tried to stay there but had checked out within the hour because it was filthy and the staff was uncooperative. I did some research on reviews of this property and all the reviews I found, except one, rated it very poor for the same reasons.

I contacted Hotwire, but they were of no help and referred me to the Website to contact them by e-mail. I have not asked for a refund, but only to be allowed to upgrade to a higher-rated facility in the area.

Hotwire’s standard response to all my e-mail is that it meets the two-star requirements they have set. I have tried explaining to them that the star rating is not in question, but the fitness of the facilities. Can you help me? — Ed Boston, Woodland Hills, Calif.

Answer: Hotwire is right — and wrong. It had every right to assign a hotel of its choosing, but not to that particular property.

Hotwire’s terms, which you agreed to when you booked your hotel, are clear. You get to choose the city and a “star” rating based on certain amenities, but the site then reserves a nonrefundable room in a hotel of its choosing.

By the way, the Hotwire ratings system doesn’t get any lower than two stars, which is described as an “economy” establishment with basic features like an in-room coffeemaker, cable TV and an alarm clock. Hotwire does, however, promise its accommodations will be “reliable,” which your hotel arguably was not.

Although I usually recommend contacting a company by e-mail, there’s no reason a large, well-established company like Hotwire shouldn’t also be able to handle your grievance by phone. I find the fact that they insisted you contact them by e-mail to be problematic. What if you don’t have access to e-mail at that moment?

Your case and several recent ones like it, underscore the need for a universally recognized hotel ratings system. When an online travel agency rates the product it sells, there’s an inevitable conflict of interest. An independent grading mechanism would serve everyone better. But for now, these imperfect star-ratings are the only real option, since no nationally recognized ratings system exists in the United States.

Hotwire’s form responses suggest it didn’t take the time to review your written complaint. You weren’t griping about the nonrefundability of your room, but about the room itself. A quick look at some of the customer reviews of the property would have revealed that you weren’t just whining. You could have appealed the decision in writing (many companies give rebuttals to form responses a higher priority in the system) or, as a last resort, disputed this charge on your credit card.

It turns out neither of those were necessary. I contacted Hotwire on your behalf, and it allowed you to change hotels as an “exception.” It also stopped selling the hotel because of the volume of complaints, which, according to a company spokesman, “led us to believe that its overall quality was no longer up to Hotwire’s standards.”

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Question: I hope you can help me. I booked a hotel through Hotels.com recently. It was the first time I’ve used them, and it will be my last.

I had a two-night stay in Sedona, Ariz., at $105 a night. I had to cancel one of the nights, so I called Hotels.com and spoke with a woman who was very difficult to understand. She kept putting me on hold and seemed as if she didn’t know what she was doing. I thought I had canceled the room, but when I got my credit card bill, I noticed a charge for two nights, for a total of $228.

I wrote to Hotels.com, asking it to adjust my charges. I received a letter from the hotel stating that they showed no record of the cancellation, and that we were listed as a “no-show” for the second night. Can you help me with this? — Elaine Farkas, Parma Heights, Ohio

Answer: If Hotels.com canceled your room, you shouldn’t have been charged. But according to the online travel agency’s records, your room wasn’t canceled.

So what happened? I contacted Hotels.com to find out.

Its records show that you called to cancel the room and were advised that you were inside the property’s cancellation window and would incur a one-night penalty if you canceled. In other words, you’d be charged whether you canceled or not.

“According to our notes the customer said she did not want to be charged and hung up before processing any modifications,” says Hotels.com spokeswoman Maureen Carrig. “Because of this, no cancellation was processed and the booking remained intact.”

You say you didn’t understand every other word the representative told you, which in these days of offshore phone centers, is believable. They claim you hung up after getting bad news — a detail I probably would have left out of my complaint, too, if I were asking for help from The Travel Troubleshooter.

Not that I’m taking sides here.

When you cancel a reservation, be sure to get a cancellation number. That’s your verification that you’ve actually given the room back to the hotel and that a refund is due. If you thought you had a cancellation, then you should have asked for that number.

If your online travel agency or hotel refuses a refund, you can always go back to your credit card company with the cancellation number and dispute your charge. That’s usually an open-and-shut case in your favor. But it shouldn’t come to that, because if you cancel and a refund is due, a hotel will do the right thing.

How do you avoid a misunderstanding with a foreign call center? My best advice is to not deal with the call center at all. Many online travel agencies allow you to cancel or change your reservations electronically, which eliminate the likelihood of crossed wires.

It also helps to pay close attention to the terms of your reservation. Is it nonrefundable? Can you cancel within 24 hours and get your money back? That information should be clearly disclosed before you book your room.

This is a difficult case, from my point of view. If the terms were disclosed and a representative told you that you would be charged two nights, then you weren’t entitled to a refund. However, if you were left with the impression that you’d canceled your room and would get a refund, then Hotels.com should give you a refund.

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Here’s a deeply troubling trend: Hotels, eager to lift their historically low earnings, are introducing more “nonrefundable” rates. Guests often have no choice but to pay them.

Reader and travel agent Suzan Alexander has a case-in-point, which I’ll get to it in a moment. Before I do, let me acknowledge that some of you may be uncomfortable with my choice of words. After all, no one is being herded into the hotel lobby at gunpoint.

But how else do you describe these pricing hijinks? This kind of thing has been happening with airlines for years. If you want an affordable ticket, you’re more or less forced to buy a highly-restricted, nonrefundable fare. Otherwise, the price of your ticket doubles or triples.

Here’s what Alexander had to say:

I am an agent who books hotels all over the world and I am noticing more and more hotel chains and individual hotels offering a discounted price for paying in advance. This type of booking does not allow any changes and is non-refundable.

This used to be a bit of a bonus in that you could save a few dollars if you were sure that you would be traveling on the dates booked. However, what I am seeing now is a real difference in price between the pre-paid and flexible rates.

Yesterday, the difference on a room in San Francisco was almost $100 per night! This leads me to believe that the option to be able to cancel 24 hours in advance is slowly disappearing unless you want to spend a lot more money for a room.

Alexander wondered if I had noticed the same thing. I have, but not a $100 price difference. That’s pretty extreme.

She continues:

It seems to me that a hotel room is becoming like a plane ticket — and in some respects worse. You pay now and don’t expect to make any changes should life interfere with your plans. What can one do about this, besides pay a greatly inflated fee for a room or save money on the room and spend the difference on travel insurance! What is going on here?

Well, isn’t this a great deal for hotels? Those that can afford a refundable room — business travelers — will pay top dollar for their accommodations. They may cancel, but assuming most don’t, the company makes lots of money. The rest of us book a room and the hotel gets to keep the money, no matter what happens.

Talk about a win-win.

I think hotels can do better than stealing a page from the airline industry’s playbook. People, this is the hospitality industry!

Guests don’t mind paying different rates for a suite versus an ocean-view room, or getting a discount for booking early. But $100 more per night for the ability to get a refund? Come on. They can do better than that.

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Question: I hope you can help me with an issue that came up with our recent cruise on Celebrity that included a hotel the night before. When I scheduled the cruise, I added one night prior in San Juan at the Gran Melia Puerto Rico, because the hotel was offering an all-inclusive option, according to the cruise line.

I paid $634 for this property, believing I would receive not only a pre-night hotel with my meals and drinks, but also transportation to the pier the very next day to begin the cruise with my husband.

When I presented the voucher at the hotel on the scheduled date the front desk representative informed me that there was no reservation under my name. I quickly contacted my travel agent and the cruise line directly and over an hour later I was called back to the front desk and they checked us in. But they didn’t offer an all-inclusive option.

I called Celebrity back after settling into our room to find out why there was a mix-up, and they said there was nothing they could do about it. Since I had no other choice, I paid for my meals at the hotel — a total of $188 for dinner, breakfast and beverages. I also had to pay for a taxi to the port the next day.

I have called Celebrity since our return, sent e-mails and written a letter with copies of the vouchers and receipt, and the only answer we get is that we were refunded the $80 for the taxi and they are unable to grant our request for additional compensation. Can you help? — Vanessa Thompson, Toms River, N.J.

Answer: You should have been offered an all-inclusive — and hassle-free — room at the Gran Melia. Instead, you spent more than an hour of your hard-earned vacation arguing with your cruise line about a reservation. That’s not good.

You really handled this one by the book. You confirmed your reservation and checked the terms of your all-inclusive visit. Once you checked in, you asked the hotel, your cruise line and your travel agent to fix the problem. Even when you returned home, you handled this like a pro, applying polite but firm pressure on Celebrity to make this right.

So where did you go wrong?

As far as I can tell, you didn’t. Sometimes you can do everything right and still fail to get the company to respond correctly. It’s what I call the “other one percent” because there’s a small portion of cases where even insider knowledge of the system can’t help you.

It’s unclear if a credit card dispute or a small claims court action would have worked. After all, you stayed in the hotel but just didn’t get some of the promised amenities. It’s difficult to persuade a credit card company or court to help in that kind of situation (but not impossible).

I contacted Celebrity, and it turns out the hotel stopped offering an all-inclusive option three years ago, which was replaced with a meal plan. You had paid for that option, but because of an “internal miscommunication” it didn’t show up in your reservation. Celebrity refunded $188 for the meals and beverages and 50 percent of the cost of the hotel pre-night package — a total of $505 — as an apology.

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I’m not sure how a fully inflated beach ball got in my hotel room.

The ornamental blue vase next to the flat-screen TV? Not entirely certain about that, either.

But shortly after we checked in for the weekend, the two met. My four-year-old son couldn’t wait to get to the beach so he could play with his new toy. He pitched it to me, and when I bounced it back — crash! — the blow-up ball collided with the ceramic décor, splintering the vase into a thousand tiny shards. Chaos ensued.

I mention this oopsie because it could repeat itself a time or two during the coming months. It might even happen to you.

Hotels typically renovate at the end of the year because occupancy rates are at their lowest levels, according to Dean Singer, a designer with Design360unlimited, a Marina Del Rey, Calif.-based design firm that has worked on renovation projects for hotels such as Fairmont, Loews, Hyatt, and Marriott.

The upgrades don’t always go as planned.

I phoned the front desk at our resort to report the shattered container, and to my surprise, the receptionist was apologetic. “I can’t believe they put those vases in the new rooms,” she told me. “Especially since you’re here with three kids.” Housekeeping arrived soon afterward to vacuum the bits of glass off the rug. But those weren’t the hotel’s only redesign flaws. The next morning, I almost lost my thumb when I closed a sliding bathroom door.

Needless to say, newly refurbished rooms like the one we happened to be staying in sometimes don’t meet guest expectations.

When Traci Fox, a college instructor from Philadelphia, checked into a Comfort Inn that had recently upgraded its rooms with high-speed wireless Internet access, she thought she’d be surfing the Web at high speeds. She didn’t. “The wireless speed was slower than dial-up,” she told me. “I mean, completely unusable.”

Greg Salter, a business analyst from Golden Valley, Minn., remembers arriving at a hotel and finding a “dishwasher sitting in the middle of the floor,” he says. “The staff was embarrassed and apologized profusely.” (They eventually installed the wayward appliance.)

How to prevent these design screw-ups? “The best cautionary measures any hotel can take, to prevent major design blunders, is to have a trained, experienced design director or consultant overseeing the changes,” says Oliver Soh, a partner at Seventh Art Group, a New York design firm. “Also, they have to know their core clientele and the clientele they’re looking to attract.”

What should you ask before you stay in a remodeled hotel? Here’s what the experts told me:

1. Do the rooms all look the same?
A cookie-cutter design may be a sign that the hotel hasn’t taken enough time to consider its renovation project. “The focus needs to be on creating more personality and less corporate, cookie-cutter designs,” says Michael Wolk, chairman and creative director of Miami-based Michael Wolk Design Associates. He says properties where “everything looks the same” are passé, and suggests that when every room appears to be identical, it also indicates a hotel is looking for a quick fix to an outdated design — a change that may or may not work.

2. Did they ask what you wanted?
If you’re a frequent guest at a hotel, and they’ve never bothered to ask what you’d like in a redesigned room, chances are they’re doing the upgrade for all the wrong reasons (like adding a star or diamond to their rating).

Francois Leclair, who owns the Casa Laguna Inn & Spa in Laguna Beach, Calif., says guest feedback — and adequate testing — are the keys to a successful hotel room upgrade. In his hotel’s case, he invited his friends and family to test the rooms before opening them to guests. “I make it my duty to sleep in each of our rooms a few times a year,” he says. “I am always able to get a few ideas or notes from that.”

3. Is it cluttered or noisy?
Poorly-designed hotels tend to scrimp on things you don’t see, like insulation. “There’s not enough between the walls between the rooms,” says boutique hotel designer Campion Platt. As a result, you hear everything happening in the next room.

Cover your ears, kids. Another problem is clutter — items that make the room look busy, but don’t do anything (like the ill-fated vase in my room). A successful redesign reduces the clutter so that it “feels more comfortable” to guests, he says.

4. How about the little things?
Sometimes the small stuff can be significant, according to Fredo Valladares, a TV host and president of the international design firm Design Nuovo. “There are a couple of fine details that are sometimes overlooked and could cause accidents or injuries,” he says. For example, sometimes, when a floor changes from carpet to hard floor, the resulting unevenness can result in hitting your toes, or stepping with the ball of your foot on the edge of the stone. “Believe me,” he says, “they’re both very painful.”

5. Are you confused?
If you can’t figure out how to turn the lights on and off, or aren’t sure how to operate the TV, chances are, you’re in a thoughtlessly renovated hotel, says Stanley Cairns, a partner at Cope Linder Architects in Philadelphia. Also, look for “inaccessible power and data locations for computers and irons” (if you can find them). The problems extend to the bathroom. “Some trendy faucet and sink concepts do not contain the splash from the faucet,” he says.

6. Are they confused?
Sandra Espinet, an interior designer in Los Angeles, says sometimes, hotels get confused, too. Like the boutique hotel in West Hollywood she recently stayed in. “Not sure whose brainchild this was, but they surely did not have the customer in mind,” she says. “The concept is too cool for school. No employee uniforms. Great, so we can’t find the employees? No front desk. Great, so when we are in the lobby we have no idea where to go or who to speak to?” As a result, the foyer was filled with guests “all looking at each other and mistaking each other for a front-desk person.” The only color used in the hotel was gray: gray wallpaper, gray carpet, gray tiles. How confusing — and monotonous.

How do you avoid getting stuck in one of these tragically redesigned rooms? “I always ask to see a room first,” says Barclay Butera, a Los Angeles designer. He looks for all of the obvious design flaws, and if he sees them, asks for another room.

At the very least, I’m now aware that checking into a renovated hotel doesn’t necessarily mean my stay will be better. And I think twice when I see an inflated beach ball rolling around on the floor.Similar Posts:

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Go on, ask your airline for a favor — maybe an upgrade to business class or a waiver on a ticket change fee. While you’re at it, see whether your hotel will offer you a suite for the price of a standard room.

The answer could be yes.

No, really. In an effort to spread a little cheer, ticket agents and front-desk workers are known to bend a few rules during the holidays. This year, they’ll probably be doing it more than ever, perhaps with the reluctant blessings of their bosses.

“This holiday season, travel companies will be much more sensitive to the economic condition of their customers and show some flexibility,” predicts Geoff Galat, vice president of worldwide marketing at Tealeaf Technology, which develops online customer experience management software for the likes of Continental Airlines, Expedia and Priceline.com. “Customer retention is so important now, so I think we may see companies going above and beyond.”

There’s just a problem or two. No airline, hotel or car rental company will announce that it has gone soft. If it does, it might as well leave the company safe open and ask customers to help themselves to what’s left of the cash.

So travelers have to guess. Galat often flies from Atlanta to San Francisco with his Ridley road bike. The Delta agents at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport always charge an extra $175 for his wheels. But lately, he has found that employees let the fee slide when he’s traveling back from San Francisco.

Why? “It’s a mystery,” he told me. (I asked Delta about the apparent inconsistency, and it couldn’t explain, saying only that Galat should have been charged both ways.)

It’s also a mystery to travelers like Nicolas Clement, who works for a government regulatory agency in Madrid. Last New Year’s, he and his wife found a discount rate at a full-service hotel in Boston around the holiday. Neither of them had been frequent guests. By all measures, they should have been assigned the worst room in the house — you know, the one between the elevator and the ice machine. But they weren’t.

“They upgraded us to a corner suite with a view of the harbor,” he remembers.

“It’s not consistent,” says Susan Hoekstra, author of the book “The Service Journey,” who is a frequent traveler and a skeptic about the travel industry’s holiday niceness initiative. Even if there’s a uniform directive to waive change fees or refunds, she says that enforcing them in a uniform way is not always possible.

“If the hotel is empty, then it’s easy to be flexible,” she says. “But if the plane is full, what can you do?”

The travel industry must be deeply conflicted about this. On one hand, it knows that making an exception to its rules for the holidays is good for business, because it makes customers happy. And happy customers are repeat customers. On the other, it suspects that letting too many $150 ticket change fees slide is also bad for business, because in the short term, it nudges it closer to the void. And right about now, many parts of the travel business — including airlines and some hotel companies — are toeing the cliff.

I certainly feel conflicted. This is the time of year when I see travel companies lavish niceness on some customers and naughtiness on others. One ticket agent will bump an economy-class passenger who paid $99 for a ticket into a $1,900 business-class seat but then tell a family that’s five minutes late checking in that they have to buy brand-new tickets for the next flight.

This kind of inconsistency makes me, as an ombudsman, look bad. Someone will ask whether I think a hotel will refund a nonrefundable rate. I say, “Not if it’s nonrefundable.” They ask the hotel anyway. The request is granted. Happy holidays. Then I get a follow-up nastygram from the reader, telling me to find another line of work.

How did it ever come to this? I mean, isn’t travel fundamentally a service industry? I imagine that some of the airline workers who remember the days before deregulation, when airlines competed on service instead of on price, must cringe when they’re forced to charge customers fees that exceed the total they paid for their ticket.

“This isn’t what I signed up for,” they grumble to themselves. They’re right. If they wanted to handle cargo, they could have applied for a job at FedEx.

Still, I recommend that you take advantage of this momentary lapse. Here’s how you can get preferential treatment during the holidays: by being a good customer. During the holidays, which are easily the most stressful time of the year for any frontline employee, your behavior may be even more important than ever. A smile, a “Happy holidays” and even a little empathy can get you treated like royalty — even when you haven’t paid a premium price.

(Photo: Caribb/Flickr Creative Commons)Similar Posts:

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