Hotel "double dipping"
 

By which I mean hotels charging / making a feature of some aspect, but when you get there you find they have sold it as well to non-guests

Examples :

• Charging a "Resort fee", but you then find the facilities, even chairs around the pool, have been sold on to early arrival outsiders for the day, meaning after breakfast "oh, we're always full round the pool on weekends".
• Car parking, where (especially UK hotels near airports) they have sold packages of 'stay a night before your flight and you can then park here for £x a day and use our shuttle bus'. Meaning the car park is full and regular guests have to park out on the streets, to the annoyance of nearby homeowners.
• Leisure clubs, where they sell memberships to outsiders, meaning you go in at 7am for a swim before breakfast to be turned away as the pool is "full" with the daily club members.
• Dining rooms where you check in, go to dinner, only to be told "sold out tonight".

Any other experiences ?

This is not exactly double-dipping, but the most outrageous resort fee exclusion I have come across is at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, where they now charge to buy an inner tube to use on the lazy river. This is the number one "resort" feature that I value at the hotel and is not included in the resort fee. (But at least I can get a document notarized as an inclusion in the resort fee.)

I think it's $20 and you keep it. I suppose you could take the tube with you to your room, but that's inconvenient; it would be nice if they at least let you return it at the end of the day and take one the next day without paying again.

I stayed at a Marriott in Vienna where they outsourced the entire pool and fitness area to third party management. Of course their main revenue stream was selling memberships, so they were fairly hostile to the hotel users and tried to prevent hotel users from using some basic things like chairs, pool noodles, etc. Even worse: the outside members (mostly old ladies) were incredibly rude to multiple hotel users, demanding (unsuccessfully :)) that hotel users remain in one part of the pool. A small indoor pool maybe 20 meters long...

I wrote Marriott a long review about that one. An otherwise fantastic Marriott with wonderful hotel staff (Imperial Riding School, if it matters...), but terrible decision to outsource to a company with zero concept of "hospitality."

This is actually how I select hotels. I phone ahead and confirm what hours the notary will be available. That and making sure they have a working fax machine. Gotta have a fax machine.

A few years ago, I booked a Park here Fly There rate at the BWI Marriott-night before a vacation. We arrived 7-8pm to see them having a huge event that covered multiple ballrooms. NOT A SINGLE parking spot. They were over flowing people up the street and double parking in the rows. I was not happy as I paid extra to park there. Nothing they could or would do. I double parked until the events ended and was able to move around 2am. They ended up giving me 20K points. Reasonable. I am sure worth it to them as they made a lot of $$ that night.

I agree it's absurd that they charge for the tubes, but it isn't a recent development. The tubes have been $25+ for at least 7 years now (I've been frequenting that resort for quite a while). For your next trip, I recommend going to Walmart near the airport. They have inflatables as cheap as $4 (I buy the "fancy" chair one for $10). I think if you rent a cabana for $300 you get 'included usage' but I've never done it.

I forgot about one that was actually pretty bad.

A few years ago, I attended a huge conference at the Gaylord Hotel in Orlando. For those who haven't been to one of these properties (now part of Marriott), they are *massive* convention hotels with everything under one roof. You can literally spend days inside the property without going outside, and this particular one was not easy walking distance to anything else.

They typically charge a resort fee because of course they do.

Anyway, I was there for the conference, and at various points throughout the week they had restaurants, bars, pools, and other facilities closed for our private parties. One night they had *most* of the restaurants closed for multiple parties. I know there were other guests in the hotel not part of the convention because I'd run into them at the hotel bar late in the evening. Those people were probably paying a resort fee and not getting to use the facilities they'd typically expect in a large resort.

I've seen other convention hotels do similar things, but this one seemed pretty bad. Since Gaylord has huge conventions every week, it's one place I'll never book a room unless I'm a part of the conference.

Thanks the improved information and advice. I used to frequent the resort in the early 2000s and was there most recently a a few years now ago I guess.

An inflatable "chair" sounds like a wonderful idea for the lazy river. :cool:

So, as it turns out I have a tax bill at home that I need to pay by 4/30. I was going to ask my housemate to fax it to me (I do have a fax machine at home for contracts, etc.) but decided that it would be easier for her to take a picture and send that by WhatsApp - what's that a 40 year difference in technology?

A couple of years ago at the Clarion Sign in Stockholm (normally a stolid 4 star hotel with 558 rooms), I went down for dinner to be told that the (only) restaurant was closed to hotel residents that evening as they had an event on for an external party. On another occasion at the same hotel I was advised that there was a 30 minute wait in the queue for the buffet breakfast "as we have a large conference on today and all the external delegates are having breakfast in the restaurant first".

I find that rather than make up a BS story, Swedish hotel employees are generally a little too honest about things sometimes and this does make it hard for the management to justify their decisions in front of angry guests. No experience of anything similar recently though.

The opposite to this conundrum is the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore where I was pleasantly surprised to see that only guests are permitted onto the roof level where the infinity pool is. During my stay, poolside bed occupancy was around 30% during busy times. Much less at others.

I have seen this at some national park lodges. They have small rooms but a nice lodge common area. The concessionaire turns the lodge common area into essentially a lunch room by serving drinks and "appetizers" in the common area. A huge volume of day bus tour visitors overwhelm the common areas ordering appetizer lunches and move around the furniture such as the coffee tables to turn them into dining tables. At another one, there is a nice but not large, pool, and the concessionaire figured out they could make extra money by selling day passes for the pool and pool showers to the people staying the the huge campground next door (which doesn't have showers) overwhelming the facility

The Hilton Diagonal in Barcelona sells access to their pool. They even warn hotel guests to make a reservation for the limited area available.

If I see a group in a hotel I am using (which I avoid like the plague but sometimes get caught out) then I always ask Reception what time is the group having breakfast, so I can avoid it.

Sadly the groups often have breakfast early and depending on the hotel and the group there may be nothing left, or nothing left that's worth eating, after they have gone.

With this sort of experience even only once I am likely to shorten my stay (even if the group has gone) and never, ever use that hotel again. If I want to be swamped and excluded by a group I'll join one, thank you.

Hotels have to learn and double dip like that at their peril. Unless they want to be left with the groups, that is.

I stayed recently at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (same ownership as Mandalay Bay) and wondered why I saw several people bringing the inflatable tubes from the pool up to their rooms. Now I know.

I stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel a few years ago in Hollywood (classic hotel, and inspiration of Disney's Tower of Terror). The first night, there was a private function that had taken over not only the lobby bar, but the entire lobby. As I was not invited to the party, I couldn't even enter the hotel lobby, despite being a registered guest. Due to its location, there's plenty to do within walking distance, so it wasn't that big of a deal, but still.

I looked at two Hilton properties in Barcelona. One a convention hotel. The other has a pay to use pool. You can't win.

Aria casino hotel in Las Vegas has a separate "hotel within a hotel" called SkySuites.
They have a private pool SkySuites for guests only .They advertise that as one of the amenities.
A year ago they started selling seats at that pool for $100 ea.
Last summer I had to wait several times to get in as the place was full and a lot of seats were occupied by non guests.

How do you know they were not guests?

Kill Resort Fees
 

I love the site Kill Resort Fees, a Vegas page that continually highlights the ridiculous fees championed by Reno, and now Las Vegas, and catching on in other places. Being from Vegas, I'm old school and realize that the opening of the Mirage marks a point in time when the town I grew up in changed forever. But the resort fee, what a crock. Three years ago we had a reunion and stayed at the D downtown. At the time they charged a $29 per night resort fee for pretty much nothing. Even the wi-fi sucked. During our last reunion in January, we avoided resort fees by booking a vacation rental and others in our group booked hotels that do not stick you with this nuisance fee. I see some of the properties back-pedaling on charging for self-parking so maybe they are seeing a drop in revenues that equates to taking action. Until they are required to include resort fees in their advertising, the lure of what you think is an extremely inexpensive room rate will continue as a fraud on the consumer.

How did you check in if you weren't allowed into the lobby?