Avoiding Hidden Costs with Hotel Rooms
“People expect good service but few are willing to give it.” — Robert Gately
Whenever you stay at a resort, there seems to be 10 bellmen eager to help with your bags. This was the case on our recent long weekend in Mexico. When I returned, I half caught a segment on The Today Show about hidden bellman charges and decided to check my latest bill. There it was — not so hidden — a line item noting “Service Charge: Pkgs. Service” for $4.48. The charge was repeated on each of the three days that we were staying there.
I’m all about fair pay for work but why then did I tip the guy $5 on the first day when the Service Charge appears to be doing the same thing. Besides we could have rolled the two bags to the room ourselves. They were hovering and obviously just doing their job, but the $5 tip turned into $20 and when you multiply that by thousands of guests over the course of the year, that’s a lot of double-dipping.
About.com provides its list of how to avoid extra hotel room charges. The writer explains, “I hate to be unsympathetic to the situation of others, but I have to say, in the case of some hotels, the bellman situation is getting out of control. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I had a total of three bellmen help me with my luggage — one to take it out of the cab, one to bring it to the bell stand, and one to take it to my room. That’s a lot of tipping. Save yourself the aggravation and buy a “Bellman Buster” — a suitcase on wheels — and wheel it to your room yourself.”
On business trips, I’m obsessed with never letting go of my bag. Even after I’ve successfully rolled it into the hotel, I constantly get approached at reception. Bellmen of the world take note: I can handle my one roller and besides my overstuffed computer bag rides nicely on top.
According to Kitty Bean Yancey at the USAToday, “An Oregon man has filed suit against Starwood, protesting a $28 “bellman gratuity” and $4-a-night “housekeeper gratuity” tacked on his bill at The Phoenician resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., last spring. The housekeeping gratuity came with an additional 32-cent sales tax. He’s looking for other Starwood guests to join in a class action suit challenging such charges and seeking reimbursement.”
“In the lawsuit, James Shulevitz says he stayed for two nights at the Phoenician, and that his reservation document discloses only a $325 nightly room rate, plus room tax. The document doesn’t mention a bell or housekeeper gratuity, which he says he learned about at check-out. He thinks that’s unfair.”
Tim Harford at Slate looks at things differently. He calls it “Minibar Economics” and writes, “Perhaps, however, these hidden extras aren’t quite so bad. In fact, I think the world might be more expensive”and more unfair”without them. If that seems counterintuitive, it’s because we tend to assume that the alternative to hidden charges is no charges at all.”
“That seems unlikely. The hotel room is fairly cheap because the hotel wants to get me through the door, hoping that I’ll spend more lavishly on the phone and the minibar than I will on the room itself. The more incontinent my spending habits, the more it is worth having me as a guest, and the lower the advertised price will fall. The logical extreme is the complimentary VIP suite in Las Vegas for the high-rolling gambler.”
“So, the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away. The interesting question is whether the effects balance each other out. You might expect that hidden charges would blunt the forces of competition. They certainly can, to the extent that they make price comparisons more difficult”and that effect is likely to be pernicious. Observing that one hotel room is $100 and another is $120, I can pay my money and take my choice. It is more difficult to make a straightforward comparison if I know that I could be charged whimsically high rates”or, perhaps, nothing at all”for wireless access or breakfast.”
I’m not buying it. So back to the bellman charge… Yancey concludes her article with these questions. I’ll reprint here for Queercents readers:
“what do you think of tacked-on tips and other hotel fees? These days, that could include energy surcharges, resort fees, workout room fees and more. Have you had any unpleasant surprises, and how were they resolved?” Feel free to comment below.
I think you’re misinterpreting Tim Harford’s article. My reading of it is that he’s all for optional extra charges, that frugal consumers can opt out of if they don’t use.
The key point is that you don’t have to pay for the frills you don’t use – and in fact, the folk who do choose to pay those fees – which are usually some ways above actual cost – are ever so slightly subsidizing your stay. Good examples of these sorts of optional opt-in extras are minibar restocking fees and wireless.
But non-optional charges that you get hit with regardless, and which you were not told about up-front, are a whole ‘nother issue.