Mind your Manners at Check-In - Tesh Tuesday

Be Polite to The Front Desk Staff or They Could Make Your Stay Difficult

Will you be staying in a hotel anytime soon? Don’t be rude to the front desk clerk! Why? Because that’s the quickest way to get the worst room, or get charged for a bunch of extras – like phone calls and bottled water. According to MSNBC, the hotel industry has been reacting to the recession by cutting staff, freezing salaries and eliminating perks for workers, making hotel employees crankier and more likely to overreact when guests are rude, drunk or obnoxious. Here are ways hotel employees exact their revenge on difficult guests:

• First, they can make you wait. Even if your room is clean and ready to be occupied, the clerk might put you in “time out” and ask you to have a seat in the lobby. If you’re really awful, they might ask for your cell phone number and tell you they’ll call you when your room’s ready.

• The desk clerk can also freeze your credit card. Hotels routinely place an authorization “hold” on a card for the nightly room rate, plus taxes, and an estimate of incidentals, like mini bar and restaurant charges. If you’re particularly annoying, they might hold a huge amount of money on your credit card – maxing it out so you can’t use it anywhere else. That happened to a couple on their Hawaiian honeymoon, whose card was declined everywhere they went. Even calling the credit card company didn't help because it would take five days to reverse the hold. The lesson: Keep your cool, and always travel with two credit cards.

• Probably the easiest way the desk clerk can avenge your rudeness: By giving you the worst room in the house. In fact, they might give you the worst room just because they don’t like your attitude.

• Finally, the hotel clerk can even make you pay more than other guests. Cyrus Webb is a former hotel employee, and he says that rude guests are often charged more for services like phone calls and food. Sometimes clerks add extra charges for Internet access, the mini bar or movies you assume were included with the room, and you might not even know until after your Visa bill arrives.

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