Food Delivery Warning!
 

I was on a recent stay in Orlando at a Marriott property and noticed a sign at the front desk mentioning that guests should not order from any menus slipped under their door. Most of these were pizza places, it explained, but the flyer was the only professional thing about the business. When the local authorities were told that the hotels were trying to keep these soliciters out of the hotels, they investigated the businesses. Many of these business were, in fact, no name businesses run out of someone's garage and were producing very low quality products in extremely unsanitary conditions. :eek:

When I asked how the solicitors get into the hotel, the employee claimed that they often use children who would be unconspicuous and could get in unquestioned.

The employee also explained that these restraunts were not endorsed by the hotel, and that anything they endorsed would be in the information folder already in the room. If not, a guest can always check at the desk and they will certainly have local restraunt take-out and delivery menus available.


I found this amazing as I know of times in the past I have used one of those flyers. Yuck! I figured this would be something for FT'ers to think about when they plan on ordering food from their hotel room. Has anyone else heard of this in other locations?

It could be the hotel making a sincere effort to protect its guests from less-than-reputable pizza vendors, or it could be the hotel making a sincere effort to protect the revenue from its room service operation and/or its deals with these folks' competitors.

This is similar to all the signs in some airports warning arriving passengers not to accept fares with unlicensed shuttles and taxis. Probably meant to protect customers but might also be a bit of protection for the facilities' contractors.

JR

Given how disgusting, overpriced, and low quality room service food can be (depends on the hotel), I'm not really sure any delivery service could do much worse. But I guess the moral of the story is that a check of the yellow pages couldn't hurt to confirm it's a legit establishment.