SimonsMiles

I was at a hotel in Las Vegas for a conference, and upon opening my room door I found two young ladies lying on the bed. Yes, those kinds of ladies. Turns out that they were a "welcome amenity" for another guest and I had been upgraded to "his" suite (for a $20 bribe on check-in) without the guy at the desk knowing what had been arranged. We laughed about it and they left, although my wife wasn't too impressed when I told her about them... ;-)

CMK10

Dear Flyertalk,
I know this is going to sound like a crazy fantasy but every word of this story is true. I never thought something like this would happen to an average guy like me but...

SimonsMiles

If it wasn't a true story, I'd have provided a version that I couldn't have told my wife about ;-)

abaheti

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.2.1.2174 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. Time to close and immortalize the thread? :-). I'm curious to see who tops this one. :-).

Canarsie

...and because Hilton hotel properties are not the only ones being discussed, the TravelBuzz forum is now the new home for this discussion.

Regards,

Canarsie
Co-Moderator, Hilton | Hilton HHonors forum

ajnaro

At the Sheraton Miramar Hotel in Viña del Mar, Chile, I began receiving an endless stream of amenities and presents after being upgraded to a better room due to Platinum SPG status. All of them had my room number but no name. At first I tried to decline them, but the bell hops kept on insisting it was all for me. There were all sorts of cakes, chocolates, wines, and even some strange things such as ceramic mugs and a set of plastic dishes for picnics. Some of the objects had Banco de Chile logos. In any case, we duly set out unpacking and trying everything. About two hours later I very polite lady came around saying it was all a mistake. Those items were intended for the leader of a large convention for whom our room had been blocked even though he had only paid for a smaller room. Since the system indicated only a normal upgrade for him, he had been booted by the check-in desk to make room for our Platinum upgrade. Of course, we couldn’t give back everything, but the lady did specifically ask for the plastic plates as she had run out of them. We had filed them in the waste basket, so it was easy to return them.

bthotugigem05

A guy who lived behind me growing up traveled to London a lot for work from the US. He never realized why he always seemed to get hotel upgrades and complimentary cars waiting for him. His secretary, who was British, never told him in hopes that he would think that she was arranging all of that for him. Good ol' George Harrison.

dvellice47

I used to work for the US government. When I traveled internationally it was usually the local US Embassy Admin unit that booked a modest room for me.

My story is not as good as the Ladies in Vegas story, but years ago the Embassy person booking a room for me in Singapore had just moments before booked a block of rooms at that hotel for the traveling party of Former President Nixon. No more than a few minutes later she phoned the hotel again, this time on my behalf, and innocently began with "Hey, I need one more room...."

The room I was given was enormous and full of gifts (of the normal type). I couldn't figure out why the hotel was so happy to see little ol' me, and mentioned the warmth of their welcome when I got to the Embassy the next day. They put 2 and 2 together, and we all had a nice laugh.

mshapiro99

Staying at the Sheraton in downtown LA during the 1994 World Cup, I was apparently assigned to a room from the Coca Cola delegation and received a commemorative bottle similar to the one in the picture in the link: http://www.happytoydepot.com/store/item.php?item_id=843. I still have it.

pipanon

In a related twist, I had a romantic weekend at the Fairmont Santa Monica and upon checkin, I asked what the occupancy was (it was low) so I tipped the nice woman at the front desk a $20 to check for any "complimentary upgrades." She assured me she would be able to improve our current reservation. (This has worked wonders in other fairmonts.)

When I arrived at my supposedly new and better room, there were two beautiful desserts inside with my name on the plate. However, given the three minute walk from front desk to our room, we realized that this was actually the same room we were originally booked in. A bell boy would have had to sprint at Einsteinean speed to beat us there as we had no bags.

Well, the $20 trick is not guaranteed in any way, and usually those front service staff deserve any extras for dealing with we demanding travelers. But it did peeve me that the lady seemed to indicate she had upgraded us to a better situation, when the desserts proved otherwise. We briefly called the manager--and he was able to upgrade us to a room higher up with a view.

7Continents

Better to have someone elses welcome amenity then to have your room given away while you still had two more nights, and to walk in on said new occupants in the throws of passion after my key didn't work and was given new keys without an ID check.
My welcome amenity to my new suite was a bottle of champagne and free dinner in the hotel restaurant every night of the rest of my stay.

CopperSteve

Obligatory: this post is worthless without pics.

BuildingMyBento

Sure...I arrived at the airport late a couple of times, and was upgraded as a result.

h15t0r1an

And did you... ?

ohcanada

My mistaken amenity story is from many years ago, 1977 to be exact, at the Banff Springs Hotel. I was a callow youth who had just started working for a multinational oil company in Calgary and all of the new staff was invited to the Banff Springs for 2 days for orientation (those were the days!).

On check in I was shown to a very small room (this was before the hotel was extensively renovated), but soon after arrival received a call from the front desk saying that I had accidentally been given the wrong room and that a bellman would be right up to move me to my new quarters. I was upset by this since I was right out of university and money was tight and I didn't relish giving another tip to the bellman. To my surprise I was shown to a sumptuous suite with a large fruit basket and a bottle of champagne waiting for me, so I happily tipped the bellman and settled in to enjoy (after phoning all my buddies in their tiny rooms to revel in my good fortune).

But when I went to sample the fruit basket, I noticed the card welcoming "Mr. Haynes" to the hotel. Unfortunately, my surname is "Hayes" and the "Mr. Haynes" for whom the room was intended was the CEO of the company who was giving a keynote address the next day! Needless to say, I called the front desk immediately and had myself moved to an appropriately tiny room (and paid yet another tip!) before I was discovered and my career was terminated before it had begun!

The sad postscript is that the CEO showed up in a limo, gave a perfunctory speech and promptly left for Calgary and never saw the damn suite. I should have drank the champagne and stayed.