Hotel Travel Tips

Tipping Your Room Attendant

Leaving gratuities for hotel room attendants has gone of the way of the shoeshine and the milkman’s delivery -- it still occurs but on a less frequent basis. Few hotel guests realize the importance of the tip, not only to the room attendant, but to insure the quality of service a guest receives during his or her stay.

Just a few dollars a day can make the difference between a top-notch cleaning effort and a quickly thrown together ‘make-up’ of the room. Room attendants remember such a gesture and it will show in the cleanliness of the room. By leaving a reasonable tip each morning, instead of waiting until the last day of your stay, you’ll be sure to receive your attendant’s full attention. A smaller daily tip, as opposed to one large one, will also avoid a replacement attendant taking the full gratuity if your normal attendant is not working.

Spotting a Clean Hotel Room

It can be easy to spot a dirty hotel room when you walk in and find stains on the carpet, the bed rumpled, and hair in the shower. But what if everything appears as it should? Can you still be sure your room is completely clean?

To determine the how clean your accommodations are, look to the details. Here are a couple quick ways to find whether your room meets your expectations of cleanliness.

• Check for spots, lipstick, and fingerprints on drinking glasses/mugs.

• Look under or around the edges of the bed.

• Inspect soap dishes for residue.

• Look for debris under chair/sofa cushions.

• Inspect ledges, vents, frames, for high and low dust.

These are just a few of the quick ways to find out whether you are getting your money’s worth from your hotel room.

Determining Hotel Charges

So you’ve returned from your vacation or business trip, everything went as planned, your stay was uneventful, and now you’re looking at your credit card statement. Well, maybe not everything went as planned. Your hotel bill appears to be higher than you expected and you have no idea why. What should you do?

The answer to that question is easy; you cut to the chase. If you call the hotel directly, you’ll typically wind up speaking to either a hotel operator or a front desk agent, neither of which will likely have the answer to your questions. While a front desk agent might be able to help you, you might waste a lot of time with them, only to find that they aren’t authorized to make billing adjustments. The person you want is in accounting. Speaking to someone who works in accounting can make determining what a charge is, whether it is legitimate, and how to make it go away if it isn’t, fast, easy, and efficient.

Disclaimer:

This article is for informational purposes only. Any action taken by the reader due to the information provided in this article is at the reader’s discretion.