Due to several well-working hotel search engines with booking possibilities anyone can deal with their overnight stays well in advance. Whatever you appreciate in your room (price, location, breakfast and so on) is comparable and therefore it is important that the hotels keep their information up-to-date. Every time the total price differs from the offered price, you are irritated and it affects the total travel experience.
What is then the total price? What can be charged on top of the announced, approved price? Is there a charge on using towels by the hotel pool? Or is it forbidden to use the hotel room towel by the pool? Is there a hidden fee for using the air conditioning in your room? Believe it or not, I have been in all of those situations at some point. Some cities practice a tourist tax or an overnight tax, which can be paid only at location on top of the overnight price you have paid for in advance. The biggest surprise of them all was nevertheless in an expensive New York hotel, where they demanded obligatory tips for their personnel in advance! I thought that tips are given for an exceptionally well done work, and afterwards. If the tips are obligatory, then they should be part of the total price that is announced in advance? It really would be much easier if tips were part of the announced price. The traveler would not need to worry about having small cash available every morning to put on the linen. Because I have been in hotels, where the cleaners got tired of waiting for small sums each and every morning, so they practiced a small revenge (“forgot” the towels, had the trash can “disappear”…) when small cash was not waiting for them each and every morning.
And sometimes you cannot even avoid cleaning by attaching the “Do not disturb” sign on the door. Sometimes they nevertheless knock on the door to really assure that you do not need their services every day. Have you noticed that the bed often contains several unnecessary clothes such as multiple sheets, blankets, decoration pillows and bedspreads that need to be ripped out of the bed before using it. All this because the cleaners do make the bed despite the “Do not disturb”-sign.
And how can a hotel claim to be ecological if it changes the same room’s same guests’ all bed clothes every day? Even the towels although they have not been left on the floor to be changed? Empty promises of ecological thinking can be irritating also in hotels.
Anyway, it was not easy to collect this many hotel challenges. Usually I have been quite satisfied with my hotel stays. And that might be hard to believe when you read hotel guests’ feedback on public review sites. Such feedback on specific hotels might turn heavy on hotel owners, since they are not removed for years. When searching for a hotel, can you really make a decision on a specific hotel, based on a ten year old irritated feedback about a room that was not cleaned?
Hotel, travel, travel experiences
