PLAN FOR THE WORST; HOPE FOR THE BEST!
Pretty much every hotel (doesn't matter what chain) I've ever stayed at puts a hold of the room charges+tax (over the entire stay, so room charges x 7 is an example), 'plus' a bit for each night for (room service, phone, internet, yada, yada).
Some hotels only do room+tax, some r+t+small amount over, some r+t+large amount over.
I've been in situations where I use my credit card (normal) & debit/visa card (rare, but happens).
Recently, as those on the Marriott forum know, I was in AMS last month. Huge room bill due to convention rates; no biggie, I had the credit. I even had extra for normal incidentals, but - put $100+US/night (their idea of incidentals), which over the course of my stay was $1,000 - so ate up the available free credit on the cc I had. Normally not a biggie, but still...
Hello - it's a regular Marriott w/ only 1 decent restaurant, a Characters bar, a Pizza Hut, and room service. Does anyone think I'm going to be spending $1K in food there given a) the few restaurants, but more importantly, b) I'm in AMS where I'm going to eat outside the hotel 90% of the time. Geesh.
BTW - before everyone complains about AMS Marriott, the concierge & exec lounge staff totally rocks (they're getting Xmas cards from me this year) & now (after the fact) I know the incidental charge policy, so I'll be pre-warned (which is part of what FT is about).
But - without thinking I had brought the credit card w/ the $3.5K credit line, which normally would be no problem. Alas, the room+tax+'the incidental' ate that up, even though the 'real' credit was going to be $2.5K. Because I had packed at 3:30am (
not Marriott's fault; let's make that clear) I only packed the one credit card so no extra credit available. So I ended up using cash out of my ATM for 9 days to cover all dinner expenses rather than my credit card. Grrr. Which also sucked - I get reimbursed, but still $$ out of my checking account until expense checks come in (and of course no FF out of an ATM). And note to self - next time, even at 3:30am, pack 2 cards.
But here's the part that really made me nervous - in a 'gazillion; years of overseas travel, for some reason the 'hold' did not drop in 3 days as per the norm. And as someone else noted, it's not due to the hotel at that point. It literally dropped the night before I was leaving (8 days later!). If it had not I would have been in deep doo-doo. I literrally had the credit available for the hotel + the incidentals, but if it hadn't cleared the pre-auth & they had then checked me out at the check-out amount in addition to the pre-auth, it would have put me over the limit & I would have been fubar'd.
In another instance I was at the LHR Ren. For a 55GPB 1night stay, they put a 250GBP hold on my debit card (credit card had been stolen as I left for London, so I only had debit card but no biggie; $$ available). Check in at 2pm; check out at 9am; room rate 55GBP & they put 200GBP in addition as a hold against room service., so basically $500 for a $100 stay. I was pissed (not the UK pissed, btw
). I had the extra, but as noted above it puts a hold on your checking account - or credit card - the hotels don't care which you use btw, as long as it says 'go' when they swipe the card - it's just the debit that gets ugly cuz if you didn't know, like the example a couple posts above & they tack on a lot, it totally screws you up.
I'm almost getting to the point, regardless of credit or debit, of asking what the hold is going to be so that if something really outrageous (ie, 250 vs 55 on a 1-night stay) is going to happen I can nip it in the bud.
I don't think check-in clerks are trying to screw anyone. Some of it is policy, but some of it is just laziness. They punch in a # w/o thinking how the amount might affect others. If it happened to them I'd guess they'd take it more seriously.
BTW - I think the comment in the post a couple above re: 'only idiots' was rude. It assumes everyone is as savvy as we are, and yes we can say they should check out their (fill in the blank cards - after all, even c.c.s have fine print), not everyone does. Even some of us savvy travelers don't. The comment about it being a very expensive lesson was spot-on however.
Cheers.