suite usage 2 -> 3 people (Additional charge appropriate?)
 

I booked a room for 2 people, got upgraded to a suite with 2 bedrooms.
So i invited someone to sleep in the second room. At checkin i told this change from 2-3 people. At checkout i had to pay 30 EUR extra for this. Is this ok?
In the same hotel i once changed from 2-3 people by calling the hotel before and there was no extra fee, so i wonder whats up.

Yes. Many European hotels charge extra for more people.

Maybe policies changed. Maybe they didn't appreciate you changing the terms of your reservation this time.

On award rooms I am starting to see a $10 charge per extra person over two on domestic hotels.

Examples? I have never seen this on points booking.

Cheers,

I've never looked, but by the T&C, awards are for double occupancy, so they're free to either charge for a third person or prohibit it.

I have seen North American properties on revenue bookings that charge more for double occupancy than for single occupancy, however, so it wouldn't be unheard of.

A charge of only 30 Euro for a third person in a suite sounds surprisingly reasonable to me. Depending on location, in some properties the charge could be a couple hundred Euros.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Touch) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.3.1.2576 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

Sheraton Philly University City.

History only goes back so far now but look at the Sheraton Madison WI and Four Points RDU

To answer OP's question, if you change the terms of your booking, the property is free to change the rate to anything it wants. If you don't like the new terms, you are free to reject them and stay elsewhere or not change the terms.

Best to have asked the property by calling ahead or asking before you invited someone else.

As others note, lucky this was only EUR 30.

I recall another recent thread with precisely the same issue. Same OP?

Oki thanks for the replys. Next time i simply wont mention if more people stay than booked.

Ahhh, so now YOU want to violate the Terms and Conditions and that's ok?

This is typical European nickel-and-dime BS (calm down, I'm European). The crappiest 50€/night hotel and an excellent 500€/night will both do it. I travel often with my family and they will even impose these extra charges for my 2-year-old. I'm not talking about places that offer breakfast, in which case this charge is understandable (depending on price of course). So what do I do? Don't declare the third person! Sure, sure, I'm not being a perfect citizen but I refuse to pay 10€ extra a night (what it usually seems to be) for my toddler.

Or you could just not invite the third person to come sleep in your room...

If you're bringing three people, you should pay for three people according to the hotel's terms. Some places let kids sleep free, but other properties don't have this policy.

Its perfecly reasonable yo deal with nonsensical policies by ignoring them.

(It is beyond me why anyone would invite a third person to actually sleep in his/her room and why anyone would join in but thats a different story)

Nonsensical by your standards? Does each of us get to make similar independent decisions according to our standards?

I don't really understand this attitude. It's no different than illegally downloading music or lying about your age to get a discount you aren't entitled to or any other act of petty service theft. Sure, you'll probably get away with it, and neither party was seriously harmed or inconvenienced by your individual, illicit act, but you still broke a contract and stole something (a service, in this case, as opposed to something with hard value). I just don't subscribe to the Jack Sparrow school of ethics ("The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do...").

I disagree. The OP was upgraded to a 2 bedroom suite, and 3 people in a 2 bedroom suite is not "extra". Up to 4 people would be perfectly normal for a 2 bedroom suite.

OP - I would advise checking the room description and initiating a CC chargeback unless it explicitly states that there will be an extra charge for more than 2 guests in this room type.

I'm not sure that free suite upgrades come with all of conditions that a booking in a suite would normally entail though. Obviously the airline industry is different, but on all airlines, there are significant differences in the fine print between first class seats that come from free upgrades and first class seats that were purchased. This has an obvious benefit to the airline in terms of what compensation and rebooking privileges they're obligated to provide if something goes sideways.

I would assume that hotels have similar protections in place. It's possible that if you booked a double occupancy room rate and then got upgraded to a suite that would normally not carry an extra charge for a third person, you might still have to pay the charge, because you're still bound by the rate that you paid for the double occupancy room.

You should understand as i bet you exceed speed limit occasionally and perhaps jaywalk too..

This is where we draw lines for ourselves and i see no problem about having two kids in a room with us. In years of travel with kids i have never had a property count them as 3/4 person in suites (or occasionally rooms) even though online reservation almost never allows it.

Ymmv but lets drop this holier than thou attitude - its not up to us to police this.

There is a definite difference between theft of service (no matter how small) and things like speeding or jaywalking. I don't think it's a moral imperative to not speed or jaywalk, but I do think that theft is wrong in every case. All I said before though is that I don't understand or agree with the philosophy you espoused. I believe in freedom of thought and expression though, so I'm not particularly opposed to other people expressing different philosophies. I will say that I would fully support a hotel if it leveled a substantial fine on you or anyone else caught intentionally violating the rate rules.

As an unrelated side note though, I actually don't speed or jaywalk, much to the annoyance of people that walk and ride with me. I've been intentionally avoiding both activities, plus any other short cuts like cutting lines for several years now. Every time I talk to people about things like this, they always say same thing: "There's no way you actually live like that in real life!" The people who know me well in real life know that I do, and I'm sure they think it's weird, but I don't really care. I live alone, and I travel all the time (almost exclusively alone), plus I don't even own a car (though I do rent them somewhat frequently). That said, I don't expect anyone else to follow my personal philosophy to the same degree I do. I only do it to prove to myself that I can. Every time I don't cut a corner that a normal, reasonable person would have cut, I spend the extra few minutes I cost myself doing a quick mental meditation exercise to reflect and center myself. I've found since I started doing this, I'm much happier and less stressed overall, but this isn't the correct place to discuss that, as it is not a lifestyle forum.

Exactly.

aaaaaaannnnnnnddddddd this is why you can't give out nice things for free

Well you just have a very limited imagination :p

The hotel would have had to clean the second bedroom, change the sheets etc and possibly clean an additional bathroom if there was one. I think the charge was perfectly reasonable.

I have stayed in rooms with two bathrooms by myself and used both bathrooms. I have also stayed in a room with two beds for more than one night and used both beds. I have also stayed in hotel rooms with another person where we were both "authorized" and we made a huge mess for the maid vs. other times with "unauthorized" guests where we left the room super neat.

What if I invited a friend over who wasn't planning on it but fell asleep in my room? Should I pay extra? What if I picked up a woman at a bar and brought her back to my room? Should I pay the hotel extra then?

I often travel to Europe alone and sometimes get asked by the front desk at check-in if anyone else will be joining me in the room. Given that I think privacy should be rule #1 in hotels I answer "not planning on it but I may get lucky". While I can understand occupancy requirements based on fire codes, as long as I'm within the safety regulations, It's none of the hotel's business if I bring one extra person and it shouldn't be an extra charge.

Well if you have to pay extra for her, just ask her to deduct said amount from her 'service charge'.

I don't get why there are so many people who have problems with hotels charging extra for more than 1 person in the room, in this case 2. I have stayed at many SPG hotels with my wife and daughter over the years (my daughter grew from a toddler to over 13 in those years) and I have had to pay for extra person after my daughter turned 12 in a number of hotels, including ones where I was upgraded to suites. I don't like it, I just have to understand their rules and play accordingly.

If you feel so strongly against paying for extra person charges, then you're free to stay away from those hotels. As everyone on FT like to say, you can walk.

i feel strongly about hotels not making a distinction anywhere between baby/toddler/child and grown ups. making a reservation for 2 adults and two small kids is impossible on most sites therefore i have no way to find out what the rules (or real constraints) actually are.

Impossible?

Have you tried calling them?

After the fact justifications don't matter. If the property wants to charge more for an extra person, that is the property's prerogative. If OP doesn't want to pay the upcharge, it is his prerogative to stay somewhere else.

If OP initiates a chargeback, this will be an easy denial and if OP persists in this form of petty fraud, he will soon find that his CC issuer will revoke his card because dealing with the petty fraud is a costly overhead item which makes him a not worthwhile customer.

The only reason not to have asked at check-in was for fear of the answer. If you fear the answer, don't bother.

That's different. OP's plan from the beginning in this case was for the additional person to sleep there.


Exactly.

So intent to have someone else sleep in the room is what counts? If I made a reservation for 2 and then my friend left before going to sleep, do you think the hotel would give me money back? Of course they wouldn't. Again - if there's no breakfast included or a per person tax issue there shouldn't be any reason to keep count and charge more unless it's a fire code occupancy issue.

If you make a rezzie for two people when you intend to have three, that's a problem. Why not just tell the truth? You don't like the hotel's rules about more than two people? Don't stay there.

In this case the OP made a reservation for two with the intention of having two. Then when he/she saw there was another bed, another guest was invited. (Who am I to judge the situation? Menage a trois? Stopping a drunk friend from driving home? Who cares) By your standards, the hotel shouldn't have charged for the third person since the original intent was to have two people and that's what was reserved. I have taken two rooms at the Sheraton in Rome with my wife and kids since the "rules" there only allow three people per room (fire codes according to them, revenue "enhancement" if you ask me) while at the Sheraton in NYC, all four of us have stayed in the same room (which was much smaller in NY, by the way) because the rules didn't prohibit it. I think the OPs situation is not the same.

You're playing fast and loose with the concept of "original intent." When the poster to whom you're replying said "original intent," he or she was referring to the fact that the OP invited the third guest over with the intention of having that person sleep in the suite. That's the intent that's relevant. This is not someone who accidentally fell asleep after a few too many drinks, it's someone who was invited over to sleep in the suite, which is a violation of the rate rules.

No, when the OP made the reservation, it was for 2 people then after check-in decided to invite a 3rd. Just like if someone makes a reservation for one and then picks someone up in a bar who sleeps over. I can just imagine the hotel front desk clerk asking someone with a single person reservation coming back from the club late at night with someone else asking "do you intend to have him/her sleep over?" as they walk through the lobby. I think any hotel that did that should lose a lot of business for that kind of behavior. They certainly wouldn't get mine again.

You may want to check T&C for the different hotel chains. SPG award only allows 2 people, so anything else requires a call to CS to book. I was able a Hyatt property using points recently for 3 people and had no problem doing online. Hyatt Diamond benefits cover free breakfast for up to 4 people in the same room, so that means you should be able to book rooms with 4 people, but of course there may be extra person charges.

I always understood that traveling with older kids would be an issue if I wanted 3 people in a hotel room, especially in Europe with small rooms and more strict rules about occupancy.

I understand what you're saying, and you're certainly entitled to not give them your business. As for the intention thing though, that was going back to your original comment. You said: "What if I invited a friend over who wasn't planning on it but fell asleep in my room? Should I pay extra?" That hypothetical clearly doesn't apply in this case, because the OP invited the third person over with the intention of having that third person sleep in the suite.

No idea about the picking up a girl at the bar scenario, but I imagine it's fairly rare to pick up someone at the bar to go from two to three in a room (one to two would be much more likely, but I don't know of any SPG hotels that charge extra for double occupancy). I don't know though -- maybe other SPG elites have had better luck than me using their Global Ambassador credentials to impress strangers enough to have a threesome.