Originally Posted by
RTW1
They trust you to stay in an expensive room and charge generous amounts to your room/account, a credit card hold is the way to guarantee payment. A generous hold avoids lots of problems at checkout.
Is it reasonable for Globalists and first-time guests to be charged the same "generous" hold, to avoid problems at checkout?
Is the hold really a "security" deposit, as insurance against someone who trashes the room? 75 bucks covers it?
I can't remember a front desk agent ever saying that the hold is for security. It's always for "incidentals". It harkens back to the days when credit card transactions were more cumbersome. Nowadays, the hotel can very easily and quickly charge each transaction, no matter how small, right at the point of sale. "Incidentals" are a much smaller factor today than in the past.
... the hold is cancelled the moment you pay the final bill.
I wish that were true! You can look at your credit card account (on your phone) while you check in. Within seconds, the hold shows up on your account. After you check out, the hold sometimes disappears by the next morning (but your available credit is still impacted). It usually takes two days for the available credit to bounce back. But on a bank holiday weekend, you could be looking an "immediate" hold release which actually takes 5 calendar days.
I'm sure that many other hotels do not use credit holds. I usually don't offer them my credit card anyway, except at checkout. If some other hotel wants to swipe my card for "incidentals", I cheerfully tell them that there won't be any incidentals. I invite them to turn off the signal to my TV, ban me from the bar, block me from their crappy restaurant, yank the phone out of my room, etc ... because I'm not gonna use any of their "incidentals".
This is not about money and it's not about Bad Credit. It's about the fact that I contracted to pay Hyatt "X" amount for a hotel room. In order to do that, I must pony up more than 2X. Yes, the excess gets refunded eventually. When I make an agreement with a customer for "X amount, go ahead and guess how much they pay? Hint: "X" amount. Not one cent more, not one cent less. Why does Hyatt get to charge me 3x and then eventually refund the overpayment?