Hotel mistrust

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  • IanFromHKG
    Participant

    I have had a brief look at the Bank of England’s advice on this – well, not this specifically, but the issues involved, at least insofar as the use of different payment methods in the UK is concerned. As they explain here, any vendor can set the terms on which they will receive payment – which means that they are perfectly entitled to refuse debit cards, say that they will only accept Pokémon cards, and so forth. However, if you make an online booking and the terms of the contract don’t make it clear that they won’t accept X, Y or Z, or state that you must pay a deposit using A, B or C forms of payment, then the logical result is that at the end of the day you will owe them a debt, and if you offer them legal tender then in the words of the Bank of England: “Legal tender has a narrow technical meaning which has no use in everyday life. It means that if you offer to fully pay off a debt to someone in legal tender, they can’t sue you for failing to repay” (emphasis added). I would hesitate to say that this translates into a statement that a hotel in the UK, on check-in, saying they want to block a credit card for XXX pounds in respect of potential exposure to a future debt would be entitled to refuse a similar deposit in cash, since at that point the debt hasn’t been incurred. I think the guest would have a good argument, however, for saying that a cash deposit is at least as good in the short term as a “block” on a credit card for a similar amount (although I do acknowledge that credit cards can be subsequently charged for additional items).

    All in all, as the BoE state, this technical argument doesn’t translate very well into real life. Credit cards are undoubtedly an easy option for the reasons explained by other users on this forum both for the hotels and the customers, and also offer considerable protection to customers (in the UK system). For these reasons alone it seems to me that the best option for most is to have a credit card – perhaps a small and dedicated one with a low credit limit for particular usage if there is a particular concern about the risk involved.

    However, to each their own… My father-in-law refused to use credit cards and had many an argument in his life as a result. I suspect, however, that we are now in – and to the extent we are not, are certainly moving towards – an environment where credit cards or other forms of non-cash payment or security against future liabilities will be required by hotels. I personally am not concerned about this, although I accept others might be.

    Interestingly, Senior Offspring just spent a year in China and hardly ever used cash or cards – online payment methods such as Alipay or WeChat Pay were so widespread she used them while shopping, in bars or restaurants, to hire the local equivalent of “Boris Bikes”, in taxis, on trains and buses – you name it. She kept a RMB100 banknote (about ten quid) with her for emergencies and never used it, Even when travelling to other parts of China she and her friends used similar methods to pay for accommodation. In Hong Kong the use of cash is increasingly decreasing (if you see what I mean) as our stored-value Octopus cards (which in our family work on an auto-top-up basis) are used in trains, buses, trams, convenience stores, post offices, supermarkets….

    The rules surrounding credit for minors in many jurisdictions (which often seem to impose a minimum age of 18) and the ongoing digitisation of society means these are only likely to increase. Hotels may need to adapt to this new environment (just as most now provide free Wi-Fi, for instance).

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