Hotel Reservations 101

I will never understand why certain people reserve rooms with empty credit or debit cards and then somehow expect to have their room still waiting for them when they get to their hotel.

Fifteen minutes ago I had to tell this poor family who had a reservation in place since January to find someplace else to stay and why? Well, the card that they used to reserve with back in January had declined today when I did my credit card pre-authorization checks! Hotels do these things people!

One thing you MUST do when booking a room is to make sure that your credit card can handle the room charge plus something like an incidental charge of say around $50 to $100 extra just in case because some hotels do put in hidden incidental charge just in case you take something from the mini-bar or start watching a pay-per-view channel or make use of the hotel's dry cleaning service. That stuff is always extra and your card better be able to handle the extra charges even if you don't plan on using them.

That unfortunate family that I had to turn away probably won't be able to find another place in town either since its the weekend of the 4th and NOBODY has rooms today. So while I feel bad for them, I also know that they'll have learned something about this give and take business called the hospitality industry and hopefully they can come back next time smarter about these things...

**I wasn't a total ass about it either. Even though our policy was to cancel said room at 4pm I held off until 8pm before I finally had to do it. Reason being, if I kept the room for them and they never show--its lost money for us and a possibly empty room for the night which is very unacceptable on a weekend like this one. I called them twice and they never answered and after that there's really nothing we can do for them anymore.