Originally Posted by
rickfromla
Crazy that these hotels are mostly empty during Covid, yet they still charge outrageous fees for parking. They will be losing 6 nights over a parking fee...
It's complete speculation because you don't provide the location, but I'd bet the Westin doesn't own their parking facilities. I've worked in and stayed in hotels that don't own the facilities were guests park. In that scenario, the hotel is at the mercy of the company that provides the parking.
In some cases, hotels own their parking facility but need to charge high parking rates because they need the revenue to cover the cost. For example, many of the hotels down the road from me on Fort Lauderdale Beach needed to build mutli-story parking ramps. Since these large structures can reduce the number of rooms in the hotel, the high parking charges are necessary to make the project economically viable.
That said, you could be describing a greedy hotel that charges $40 to park in a common surface lot that costs next to nothing to maintain.
Originally Posted by
rickfromla
As a titanium, would it be worth it to call the Westin to see if there's any wiggle room on the parking?
You can certainly call. When I worked in the Reservations Department of a downtown hotel with very high parking rates, we got daily calls about parking. But, we didn't own our parking facility. So, all we could do was to tell callers that if you didn't want to pay for parking, you'd have to stay elsewhere.
Realistically, that's probably the type of answer you'll hear. But, there's nothing wrong with calling and asking.