Originally Posted by
remdk
1. I was under the impression that the hotel demanded CC information as part of their booking confirmation because of any incidentals that occurred. In which case there would be no privacy issues..
I have used the service twice so far. Neither time was I asked to provide a credit card number before arriving at the hotel. Of the two hotels I tried, one asked me for a credit card at check in (but of course, by that time, there could be no issue of no show) and the other one gave me the choice to give a credit card if I wanted to be able to charge incidentals to the room (which I did) saying it was up to me.
Originally Posted by
remdk
2. The USD 50 no show fee is appears to be levied by QRs +Qatar team rather than any individual hotel thus making it a QR charge. QR certainly claim that the +Qatar scheme is administered by them.
Your flight booking, and the credit card you give is to Qatar Airways. The +Qatar booking of the complimentary accommodation is with Discover Qatar, and it is Discover Qatar and not Qatar Airways which reserves the right to charge you in case of no show. They are two separate entities with two separate names. They may or may not belong to the same parent company, I have no idea, but this makes no difference in terms of data protection, it would be totally against existing regulations for QR to pass on credit card details provided for a transaction completed on any of its EU websites to a parent company (in fact, arguably, it would also likely be illegal for a given company to use such stored details for any other purposes than the ones specified in a given contract - such as buying a ticket but we don't even need to go there). Other countries of sale may have different rules of course.
So my understanding remains that should Discover Qatar want to impose a no show penalty, they would have to contact you after the no show and ask you to pay the $50. As mentioned, I personally doubt that they would but this, on the other hand, is pure conjecture on my part.