richard

The "innkeeper" laws in many places are posted in the hotel rooms on the doors. Sometimes in closets.

I read one recently in Pennsylvania. It recites the laws that specify that the innkeeper or "apartment hotel" provide a place to safely deposit your valuables. A listing of valuables includes gold and silver bullion, jewelry, railroad carriage ticket books, precious metals, etc.

Then it says that in no case shall the hotel be liable in any event for losses exceeding $300.

That gave me a chuckle.

Have you read these posted notices and seen any funny ones?

Analise

They interpret the law to mean that they can provide the safe but not the guarantee that your things will be safe in the safe.

GeorgeMont

I forget which country, somewhere in Asia.... they had more of a "rules" posting than an actually innkeeper law. Listed amongst the other rules was something along the lines of "you are not permitted to keep any nuclear devices in your room".

Needless to say, I checked out and moved down the street. I wasn't about to let my warhead sit out on the street overnight!

jpatokal

A "hotel" (I use the term loosely) I once stayed at in Thailand asked guests to refrain from throwing garbage out the windows.

Most all Singaporean hotels have copies of the Innkeeper Act floating around, spelling out in Singaporean bureaucratic detail the innkeeper's responsibility or lack thereof for the guest's horse and carriage!

WHBM

Ones that say on the back of the door "The room rate for this room is Ł250 per night" when they let it without status for Ł59, and often less.

Blumie

The sad thing is that these rules generally are enforceable today, even though they were written 100 years ago. So the hotel staff can let themselves into your room and pilfer all of your possessions, and the hotel generally will not be liable.

richard

or they can mess with your horse and there's not a thing you can do about it...

Just don't let me lose my railroad carriage ticket books

Meriem

Technically not on a hotel door, but in a guest regulations manual left in the room at a cheap motel in New Hampshire : prohibited to throw forks in the pool. I guess spoons and knives were OK though.

pbiflyer

Actually, this one makes sense. Here in Florida, they have to post the maximum charge that that particular room can be rented for.
In places where special events take place and room rates soar, like Key West's Fantasyfest, the posted rates are quite high, often times way higher than a normal night.
Bet it is a rule in the UK, or the part of the UK you were at.

Traveller

My little Hampton in a small town in Alabama this week says my room rate is $300.00 a night. I had to reread it, I thought it meant $300 a week.

Scandalous

.....

pinniped

In my Amsterdam hotel, there was a polite note on the back of the door asking us not to use "hard" drugs in the room.

On the Pennsylvania one from above, my guess is that the innkeeper was intending to guarantee safety in the safe, they just wanted to clarify that if you had a lot of bullion on you - $300 worth - then it wasn't guaranteed. I mean, if you're walking around with that much gold, you must be Fort Knox, and that's before we even talk about your railroad carriage booklets.

I always enjoy reading the max rates on the back of hotel room doors. There are always super-high rates at Fairmonts and Ritzes, but the most interesting are the ones on the back of the door at Hamptons and Fairfields where I'm paying $59/nt. I've seen $399/nt., $449/nt., etc. in places where they are obviously waaaaaay too optimistic that they're going to get a Super Bowl or Olympics taking place in the parking lot of said hotel.

Steve M

Apologies in advance for posting to an older thread, but this is directly relevant to my question and it's an evergreen question:

I understand that the purpose of posting the room rate (or "maximum room rate") is to prevent gouging. But what is to prevent a hotel from posting a max rate of $999 regardless of what the typical rate is? Why would a hotel post anything near what they think will be the actual max rate? I understand that these laws are very old, and don't really make sense in today's world, but my question isn't about the law. It's about why hotels would not just post a ridiculously high rate. Some hotels actually seem to post a reasonable rate on the door. What is their incentive to do so?

pinniped

I've noticed in some countries that the rate on the door is the rate I actually paid (or close to it). Their hotel regulations may base some part of the license or taxation on the posted rate, perhaps?

In the US, where these still exist, it's typically a laughably high rate. But the requirement does seem to have vanished in many places - I don't see these as often as I did 20-30 years ago.

DELee

Uh, I have photographic examples from all over the US and select countries where the max room rates are clearly posted either on the back of the room door or somewhere nearby (usually inside the closet at the back for instance) for the past decade or longer.

David