Move To The Back Of The Line To Upgrade

[SavingMoney]

Let me make a few general statements:

1. Most Priceline / Hotwire customers have probably been offered upgrades for a fee at checkin time.

2. Most travel website customers do not receive points or credit for nights that they book. For example, if you booked 25 times, you would not gain status as a gold member of a hotel promotional program.

3. Hotels typically offer points on money that is spent in their hotel as a way to get consumers to spend more.

Now for my personal experience:

I recently stayed at a hotel that I had booked at a discount. I say discount, but when you factor in the overall cost with fees, the exchange rate, parking, and the inflated price for everything from a can of coke to a meal... I could just as easily have booked a regular hotel room here for the same price and not had to travel anywhere. :)

Having stayed at this hotel for an extended stay before, I knew which rooms in the hotel I liked. I had also accumulated a good deal of points from my previous stays. I booked the room well in advance (prepaid of course), and I wanted to use these points to upgrade my room. I called the hotel and asked them if I could use my points to upgrade in advance. They told me to call Starwood. I called Starwood. They said that they couldn't do it, because I had not booked through their system (which I would never do anyways, because their prices are astronomical).

I then called the hotel back, and learned, of course, that they don't do upgrades for customers until the day of arrival. They make their own unfair rules.

They also told me that the number of points that I would need to book an upgrade at checkin was different because I had booked through another website. (500 more points or $25 more)

This is why I will not give the Hotels the power to book their own rooms. Everytime I book using a hotels website, I am allowing them to charge whatever rate they want. And the benefit of online booking websites, like Expedia has been their ability to show us many different hotels in one city. In other words, booking sites increase tourism.

One other interesting note. If you try to book a nights stay in Niagara Falls with Hilton using points, they will book you into a non-fallsview room for your points. It makes you wonder why you are booking a Niagara falls room. The points level is going up by 10,000 points in this location unless you book before June.

Now The Rant:

As customers we are not stupid. We decide where we want to spend our money, or where we don't want to spend our money. If a hotel decides to book us into a shoddy room, we have the option to simply get up and eat elsewhere, park elsewhere, etc..

I personally think that a romantic dinner in a hotel room with a beautiful view is very nice, and am willing to spend money on it. But if they want to give me a view of a brick wall, I would rather dine elsewhere.

And second class points.. well..

Rant On A Complete Different Subject:

City owned parking monopolies. Say you park your car at their $20 a day maximum rate. You then take the car out for an hour and drive around, and park again. You are charged another $20 dollars maximum rate. You are then charged the maximum evening rate as well.

I actually read on parking website that the city has decided that they don't like cars Downtown. They like people who park for short period of time (because that gives them their $20), but not people who park all day. Needless to say this is all in the same of a social good.

Which is all very nice, but how do they think travellers get to the city?! :)

Good Stuff:

Honestly, the best place that I have stayed so far was a little 2 star place which I booked for a low, low price. Free parking. No costly room service, and free included breakfast! Nobody even worried if you had a second piece of toast or glass of orange juice. :o