A Non-Obvious Reason You Should Double Check Your Hotel Folio

I've fortunately not hit this yet, but do be aware of areas where tourist taxes/fees are optional. There are a couple of off-airport locations which I've had to correct as I didn't arrive by plane, therefore not required to pay the airport charges. Similar, in Ontario, some establishments charge optional marketing fees. These fees go straight to the business, none to the government.

W Bulkhead Atlanta is notorious on this. I still waiting for business office to call me back for recent incident last week. I called several times and left a vm.

It goes without saying that checking the bill on checkout is important. However, it is only the first step. One must also check diligently with your credit card and rewards plan to check that the proper rewards were credited. I have stayed in Hilton and Marriott hotels in North America, Europe, Bali and South Africa this year and have had 15 out of 60 stays incorrectly reported to HHonors and Marriott Rewards respectively. I am still fighting with the Conrad in Bali for an incorrectly recorded stay in April - problem being their 30% down special offer which was not correctly reported on the final checkout - only the final 70% payment. They also missed 4 nights on the stay credit (now important with the new DFL rules).

As a courtesy to future guests please check-out of your room. Once a hotel knows you have left they can send housekeepers to your room straight away and prepare it for any early arrival guests. If you don't check-out housekeeping assume you are still in the room and can't start cleaning it until your check-out time, and with status that could be quite late. It's the difference between the next guest being checked in by 11am after a red eye or 3pm.

I just had a disagreement with Hotel Tonight over a folio discrepancy. I use the app often as my work takes me to various cities and my engagements there have no fixed end times. So I'll often find myself in a taxi realizing I need a hotel room for the night. I'm almost the perfect customer for HT and I really like their UX and the app design. That said, I recently booked a room and was surprised to receive a folio with a $40 "service fee" on it. The hotel told me to talk to HT and wouldn't budge. HT told me the charge was mentioned in the hotel description and sure enough, there it was in the last line item of amenities. My argument was that, on an app predicated on ease and speed, adding this right at the bottom of a block of copy is pretty shady. The design and function of HT assumes you're NOT reading the fine print and simply want to get from choosing a hotel to booking it as quickly as possible. It's the entire reason for being of the interface and design. Additionally, knowing the hotel routinely charges this service fee, why not simply include that in the booking price? I thought the whole thing was very sneaky. I asked HT to credit my account on good faith. I'd learned my lesson and I'd be happy to read the fine print next time if they would chalk this up to fault on both parties. They bluntly refused, so I'm using the Hotels.com app from here on out for any last minute bookings. It's not the $40. It's the principle.