I am assuming you were trying to pay cash. Regardless $300 does seem a bit high, especially for a Residence Inn (hotels like this usually request $25-$50 and the most I've ever had to put down was an additional $200 at some W Hotels in NYC), but maybe this property has a high percentage of people trying to pay cash and then vandalizing or smoking the rooms.

I agree though that sometimes the authorization holds can be a major pain for those who have lower credit limits or are working on a tight budget (which it seems does not describe 95% of the vocal FT'ers). Perhaps some other banks do this as well, but one thing you could do would be to set up a Bank of America checking account. While authorization holds do post to the account, Bank of America does not count them against your available balance, so it would not affect the amount of cash you have available to spend.