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Unwanted Hotel Phone 'Calls'

September 7, 2006 at 11:12 AM | 0 Comments

There's a new annoying hotel trend on the horizon. Budget Travel talked about newest type of in-room advertising in their latest email newsletter filed under Pet Peeves.

For the most part, in-room advertising is not that new. Hotel have been encouraging you to hit up the hotel restaurant, spa, bars, fitness centers and whatever else the hotel may have on site for quite some time.

We see this all the time in Las Vegas. Our last experience at the Venetian was during the marketing/advertising promo for the Phantom of the Opera. The music played in the elevators which we plastered with ads. Your key card was an ad for the show. There was a reminder on the coffee table and the television remote for the show (and Blue Moon Group).

Of course, standard hotels and resorts can't get away with this in-your-face type of advertising for their tiny hotel spa, so they found a new way to reach you: on your in-room voicemail. Budget Travel recently experienced it at the Fairmont Scottsdale:

A few hours after checking in, [the mag's editor] saw that the message light on his room phone was blinking. He called in to get the message, and it was a generic prerecorded message--like those ones you get from politicians around election time--from the resort's spa, urging him to get a treatment. (The worst part was that he had to listen to the whole thing before he could navigate the system enough to figure out how to delete it so the light would go out.)

If you've experienced this at other hotels, send us an email. Or if you want quicker results, leave a comment below.

Related Stories:
· Pet Peeves [Budget Travel]
· September's Hotel Trend Watch [HotelChatter]