I am truly surprised that Marriott allows them to get away with this.

Same was asked upon checkout at Marriott SkyCity Hong Kong Airport.

The lady at the counter asked what my preference was for the final charge: a currency conversion direct to USD or no conversion Hong Kong Dollars. I asked to be charged in HK Dollars and she checked as such. On the bill given back to me, a typed 'X' was present on the HKD.

This isn't a surprise to me though, buying Duty-Free in International Airports for example, I'm always prompted by the cashier to either pay local currency or do the direct conversion. Just be careful.

I have no problem with being offered the opportunity to convert on the spot to dollars (particularly when the local currency is very volatile) if the offer is truly just an offer; the difference with what happened to me at the CY Munich (and to nacho at the CY Hamburg) was that they attempted to force DCC upon us and actively resisted our choice not to avail ourselves of the "feature".

As you say, "Just be careful."

This is such a good thread I thought I would add my 2 cents. They tried this scam on me at a Cologne Hotel. the new "wrinkle" was that I had booked the hotel through Booking.com and had agreed that they could charge my credit card card on booking. Card is capital 1 so I pay no Foreign exchange fees. When they presented the receipt in the morning it had DCC with the usual rip off rate. I got all the standard lies . "The bank makes us do it", "it's not us it's the bank" "It's the standard exchange rate" etc etc etc. I do have some advantages. I speak German and I've taught law and technology in Germany and the USA. My German lawyer lives only a few miles away. After listening to Hotelier crap for 10 minutes I suggested calling the criminal police and making it a police matter. They quickly refunded the charge and I paid cash. I have had 10 emails exchanged with Booking.com asking why they do not prohibit their contract partners from making these totally unauthorized transactions. They have yet to give a satisfactory answer.

I urge everyone to fight this scam/fraud with every tool at your disposal. You will help every traveler

But you see, they won anyway when you paid cash (even if you withdrew the cash from an ATM and paid no fees and your bank doesn't add any foreign exchange fees or passes along the 1% mc/visa fee). Here's what I do in this situation. If I can't get them to void the transaction and do it properlyh in local currency, I circle the foreign currency amount on the charge slip, cross out the disclaimer about accepting the exchange rate as final and write local currency not offered.....and tell them in no uncertain terms I will be disputing the charge if it comes through as a dcc charge. Usually that does the trick.

I think I related here in this thread although I don't want to go back through it that I had this scam attempted on me about 3 times thiks past summer in Ireland. In each case, they relented as soon as I brought it up. The only time they didn't relent was at Burger King in Dublin with the usual lies. I finally did what I said above and when I got home, I submitted a dispute. I wanted to really dig the knife into them, have the charge returned to them (it was a Schwab investors reward card, no foreign transaction fee in any event).....the difference on a charge of €7 was about 45¢ US (I submitted the dispute by fax which I don't pay for rather than snail mail which would have cost me the diffeence anyway; after all it's the principale of the matter). Boy was I disappointed when I heard back from FIA that in the interest of good customer relations, they were refunding the 45¢ and not charging the transaction back. Damn; I really wanted to teach those thieves a lesson.

Just had this happen at Renaissance Beijing Capital City. Took 25 minutes to sort it out. The personnel in the Club lounge insisted that the charge would be in local currency even when the dollar amount was clearly show, although much smaller font and the word that there is no commission etc.

They also said that every body else always pays this. I did check and this "no commission" transaction would have cost me exactly 4% compared to the spot rate. Asked to speak with the manger on duty. He was aware of this issue and run it through another POS at the front desk.

Let me repeat. This is nothing more than a SCAM. The hotel will get a kickback from the bank when they are using these inflated rates.

Great thread!
 

Thanks to the OP & all the replies!

Not really, I get my expenses paid sometimes in Euro cash.

FWIW if you are a bank of America customer you don't pay any fee and get the best exchange rate at Deutsche Bank ATMs
.

You should have dropped me a line because my office is in the Cap Ren (I would have put you in touch with one of the more competent staff members); I also probably could have fetched you a better rate. Yeah, all the Marriotts in BJ do DCC, and I haven't been able to affect any change yet, in spite of knowing all the managers. Very annoying. Bank of Communications is the true culprit, but that doesn't get Marriott off the hook.

Did you happen to notice the procedure for the DCC opt out? We have an enormous thread about DCC in the China forum, but we have yet to crack JiaoHang's POS machines.

We ended up using a different POS machine downstairs that printed out a carbon copy at the same time.

Perhaps the mods can create a sticky thread of Marriott properties that engaged in this kind of behavior. It would be a real service to those of us who travel internationally - either to avoid those hotels or to know how to make them bill us in local currency/avoid DCC.

My contribution: Marriott (FS) in Milan. Details in a report I just posted in the Marriott Milan thread.

and if this thread is started, add Beijing City Wall (along with every damn restaurant in the city!)

TMK, all Marriotts in Beijing use BankCom as a processor and do mandatory DCC.

They do all have POS machines that can charge CC's without DCC too.

however, if you catch their "games" they'll charge in RMB so I don't agree that the DCC is "mandatory"