[MartynSinclair]

I do enjoy a good You Tube travel review and I watched the one below about the Ritz in London. Accepted, it is the travellers choice whether to reserve a £1,400 suite, pay £350 for dinner and park a car for £65.

However, a “Accommodation Service Charge” which you are only told about at check out, was added to the bill. Skip to 30:00 mins to get the full breakdown of the bill. Never come across this before, but wouldn’t it be easier to charge the suite out at £1,470. As the blogger suggests, arguing about a service charge at check out could seem petty.

In another European hotel, I was recently charged Euros 12 for a tea bag, where ‘posh’ coffee is charged Euros 6 and bottled beer Euros 10. This was at the bar and not room service. The tea was a UK brand and it made we wonder whether European hotels are charging extra for British goods?

The hotel I am currently in, now charges (not a hold) the full stay on check in (no real problem with this) but tried also to block off Euros 50 a day for extras, which will take 10-30 days to be released after departure. Where are the days, just presenting a credit card will suffice?

I’ve also given up using hotel car services in Europe – Uber and Bolt now come in way way WAY less then using a hotel car, even when booking an exec style car.

I know these are not first world issues, but would be interested to hear views about the “accommodation service charge” and also the most shockingly priced item you have been billed for by a hotel, you were not aware of at check in.

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Jimmer7, BackOfThePlane

[cwoodward]

Martyn Yes and they have been for years -remember those internet charges which were nothing short of gouging captive business customers.

For years I replaced from local stores anything that I had used from the room ‘Mini Bar’ at often 20% of the room price prior to it being checked as I normally stayed in the same hotels several times a year and knew the routines. This still works in many destinations but the more up-market operators have got wise and now offer in the “mini Bar items that cannot be easily replaced. These days we pop to the local supermarket and purchase anything we may need.
We like Mandarin and Shangri-La hotels and find their mini bar prices to be reasonable

I still use hotel cars in Asia and Australia but not in Europe for many years.

These added “charges” that you mention are nothing short of a disgrace and a re-emergence of the gouging tactics employed a few years back for the internet use and if employed by the hotels that we normally book I would never stay with them again.

1 user thanked author for this post.

BackOfThePlane

[BackOfThePlane]

Going back to the OP, and in reference to the Vlog in question ‘Walk With Me Tim’, I have watched a few of his older videos in which he first came to prominence….reviewing the very worst hotels that the UK has to offer! Highly amusing.

As to the subject of this post, yes, they are taking the mickey and I agree that adding a service charge to the bill at the end is ridiculous and should be outright banned. Indeed, I think legislation is going through the UK parliament that will crack down on such practises although whether it covers this specific practise, I don’t know.

[ASK1945]

BOTP wrote: “I think legislation is going through the UK parliament that will crack down on such practises although whether it covers this specific practise, I don’t know”.

The bill may be amended as it goes through the Parliamentary stages, so we won’t know until the “final reading”.

PS: I haven’t used anything from a hotel minibar for years – I always go to a local supermarket where I can choose brands I want anyway – and at a cheaper price.

1 user thanked author for this post.

BackOfThePlane

[stevescoots]

same here, except in absolute emergency i never use the mini bar or fall for the water trick, one bottle is free the the next to it has a tag (and differing brand) which they charge for!

have also stayed in hotels where the 2 sachet of Nescafe next to the kettle is “free” but use the coffee machine and pods next to it is chargeable

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ASK1945

[cwoodward]

I find that some hotels are far more generous with bottled water than others. Shangri-La and Marriott (at least in Asia) will give as many bottles as you ask for (we normally have 4 (mid size) overnight and several in the day which we often use outside of the hotel. Admittedly Mandarin and Peninsula are in a higher price bracket but they also deliver as much as is requested.

[esselle]

Having checked out of a hotel (local high end) in a Chinese town whose name I forget, I was rather put out when, waiting for a limo pick up outside, two employees came running out screaming a bit aggressively in Mandarin and waving furiously at me.

Bewildered, I saw them waving an empty instant coffee sachet at me, seemingly the one I had used to make a cup from the tray in my room.

Eventually I went back to reception with them, feeling like a criminal, where I paid what I think was the equivalent of 6 pence for it.

1 user thanked author for this post.

ASK1945

[cwoodward]

Esselle, I well remember those days and prior when there were few hotels and we use to take our own cook from HK and stay in dormitories at our makers factories. Our overseas visitors normally remembered our warnings not to drink the water but they often forgot about the ice cubes if on a night out to a bar or nightclub with sometimes fairly disastrous results.

[DavidSmith2]

Thanks to MartynSinclair and BackOfThePlane for introducing me to the Vlogger. He is much mmore watchable and informative than many of his competitors and I will definitely check out his back catalogue.

When I am in London I usually stay at the Royal Over Seas League, which is 5 minutes from the Ritz. Rooms are definitely much, much smaller but quite big enough and with very comfortable bedding. Tea/coffee/water are included and there is an empty fridge (which I quickly furnish with wine and juices). Rates are between 200 and 250 a night. No hidden extras and no pre-payment, but they like you to settle up every 7 days.

I can get a decent bar meal for around 25 pounds and enjoy the house white for 25 a bottle, whist overlooking Green Park.

I will now enjoy all those experiences with even more satisfaction, knowing that my neighbours up the road are paying 10 times as much for not a lot more!

3 users thanked author for this post.

cwoodward, AlanOrton1, BackOfThePlane

[Lamb]

I have found Hotels over the last few years have all put rates up and are penny pinching reduced cleaning and god forbid you go to a US hotel most have a hidden resort fee and charge you $50 a day for incidentals you have not already had and when you check out it can take up to 30 days for this to go back on your card and that soon mounts up.

[AlanOrton1]

Sadly there has long been a bit of a slide with Hotel bills including far more than just the accommodation charge.

Looking at my last NY stay, there are 7 additional charges per night over and above just the room.
Including the Javits Center Tax, which appears to have been charged for as long as I can remember, in aid of a conference centre on the far west side of Manhattan.

Not to mention many hotels blocking $x on your credit card to be released / refunded at some point after check out, as Lamb highlights, which is a newer trend.

Plus in many US cities, for your added convenience, a Destination Fee, which often offers you nothing over and above what you’d receive by holding some form of status with a hotel chain (internet, 2 bottles of water and if you’re really lucky, a free cup of luke warm, stale coffee between 6.30 – 6.40am).

Most outrageous charge – about £15 for a bottle of water from an average hotel in Moscow 10 years ago (not even from the mini bar!).

[Kopite]

This will show my age, but on the subject of hotel gouging when they can….back in the 1980s I was staying at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

I had a note under my room door saying there was an incoming fax for me at reception. It was from my head office in London and was about 10 pages. The hotel asked me to pay RM XXX for the incoming fax.

I asked why? Obviously you paid per page for any fax sent in those days, but this was the first time I’d been asked to pay for incoming. They couldn’t give me any real explanation but mumbled about the cost of fax paper. The cost they wanted was of course about 10x the cost of a roll of thermal fax paper.

I read the fax at the desk then gave it back to them saying that I didn’t want it anymore and therefore didn’t pay.

[GivingupBA]

The worst I had was on checking out of a 3-star hotel in Hong Kong in the 1980s, they would not let me go, saying I had cut up a lot of bedding in my room with a knife. In fact I had not damaged anything, and had locked my room as I left it. I just stood there denying it for quite a while, then eventually they reluctantly said “You can go now”.

A very odd event.

[BackOfThePlane]

@Kopite – Yes, hotels do gouge. But, and just playing devil’s advocate for a moment, the cost of the ‘service’ you received clearly isn’t related to the cost of the paper, it is everything that is involved in your being able to receive that fax. Otherwise, a cup of coffee at the same hotel would be measured in cents. Anyway, thank god for email!

[Pieter]

This is the reason I have moved to using AirBNB rather than hotels, especially in places where I stay longer than 3 nights. There are none of these hidden costs and CC holds that take forever to reverse.
(Oh and as Martyn mentioned – it is easier to buy a house than rent a car! I have given up and also just use ehailing services)

[Author]

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