We've posted before on how several online travel agencies are in hot water with local municipalities over hotel room taxes and it looks like the tug-of-war will be going on for a while.
Several towns and counties have complained that online travel agencies like Expedia, Hotels.com and Travelocity have pocketed hotel room taxes which rightfully belong to the city or county that the hotel is located in.
You know what those taxes are like. You see them on your check-out bill and it usually is listed as a state or city tax or both. For instance, we just checked out of a hotel in NYC and were docked with a NY state tax, an NYC city tax and an occupancy tax, totaling about $45.
Everything worked out for our girl Amy at yesterday as we and she knew it would. Tablet Hotels was able to get her into a family suite at the Alchymist Grand Hotel, after her initial hotel missed its opening date.
Here's what is inside a family suite :
These two level Rooms are the ideal combination of two deluxe rooms, especially for families. The Family Rooms feature a two separated bedrooms with one queen size bed and two twin beds on the upper level.
Each bedroom has air-conditioning, LCD TV with premium channels, DVD and CD player, safe, mini-bar and high speed internet access. Family Rooms have two separate bathrooms, one with shower corner only and one with a shower, bath-tub and bidet. The size is 60 square meters or 650
square feet."
Awwww, that's the kind of happy ending we like to see!
Our good friend Amy over at NewYorkology wrote to us this morning to share some nerve-wracking, last-minute, unplanned changes to her travel plans to Prague.
It turns out the Alchymist Residence Nosticova has not completed its reconstruction, despite taking reservations on its website as recently as a week ago.
Since Amy booked through Tablet Hotels, the boutique hotel booking site is doing their best to relocate her. However, such a change the day before she's due to take off has not made for easy pre-trip organization.
Priceline has begun to cut out the cancellation and change fees for any "published price" reservation. These are reservations where you can pick a specific hotel to stay at rather than go through the blind booking process.
Name-your-price hotel bookings however are still iron-clad reservations meaning no refunds, no cancellations and no changes at all.
Additionally, the company said they would lower the booking fees on published-price reservations too. But Travel Weekly says be careful:
Because Priceline lumps hotel taxes and service fees together when displaying prices, the consumer cannot tell how much lower the booking fee is.
Dropping fees and charges is good to hear but just remember to always read the fine print when making any sort of reservation to see just what the cancellation or change policy is.
There's tons of hotel news flying around this week and we don't have time to give each and every story the love and attention it may deserve, so you will have to settle for some news briefs.
· Hotel Sick: 30 British tourists fell ill, and one died while staying at the Grand Hotel Gardone near Lake Garda in Italy. Everyone ate from the hotel's restaurant and a salmonella contamination is suspected. [Canadian Press]
· More Bad News for Beijing Hotels: The hotel industry in Beijing is not going to do as well as predicted. Some put the blame on strict visa policies. [NY Times]
· Booking Sites in Trouble Again: A small New Jersey town joins others in suing popular online hotel booking agencies, claiming they don't pay the full hotel tax demanded by the city. [Newsday]
· No New Hotel for the Javits Center: The Javits Center plan for an expansion which included a 1,200-room hotel along 11th Avenue at 35th Street can now be filed in the Lost Hotel Files. [NY Observer]
Here at HotelChatter we get all sorts of questions about booking hotel rooms such as where to book (boutique hotel or a place with a loyalty program?), how to book (phone or website?), how to get a cheap rate, how to get free upgrades and the always lovely "Can you hook me up with a free room?" (We can't.)
But we do realize that you have a lot of good questions about booking hotel rooms. So once a week we're running Everything You Wanted to Know About Booking Hotel Rooms where we will give you the latest news, advice, tips, and answers on booking a room. And just maybe we'll be able to hook you up with a free room after all.
This week we're chatting with Scott Booker of Hotels.com. With quite possibly the most perfect last name ever for someone in the hospitality industry, Scott is the Chief Hotel Expert and Guest Advocate at Hotels.com.
His responsibilities include making consumers aware of new deals which pop up on the site as well as highlighting guest reviews from Hotels.com customers. We put him through the ringer (sorta) on a bunch of other issues and as far as we know, he's still standing.
Now Hotels.com wants to pump you up. The booking site has announced its Summer Drive and Save program which gives bookers a $50 gas card for each booking of three nights or more.
But don't think Hotels.com is late to the game. This is the fourth consecutive summer that the site has offered a gas program.
To qualify, you must book a hotel stay before July 6, 2008. The stay must be for travel through September 1, 2008. Three nights minimum is required. There is no limit on the gas cards as long as the minimum stay requirement is met for each booking.
Here at HotelChatter we get all sorts of questions about booking hotel rooms such as where to book (boutique hotel or a place with a loyalty program?), how to book (phone or website?), how to get a cheap rate, how to get free upgrades and the always lovely "Can you hook me up with a free room?" (We can't.)
But we do realize that you have a lot of good questions about booking hotel rooms. So once a week we're running Everything You Wanted to Know About Booking Hotel Rooms where we will give you the latest news, advice, tips, and answers on booking a room. And just maybe we'll be able to hook you up with a free room after all.
This week we're chatting with Barry Boone who is the founder of CurrentCodes.com, a one-stop shop for all of those special promotion codes for bargains, sales, discounts and more. CurrentCodes is expansive, listing promo codes for nearly 60 different retail categories totaling about 1,800 stores from clothing to cellphones to jewelry and travel.
Of course, we're focusing on the travel category here and more specifically, hotels. CurrentCodes list codes for some of the major hotel chains and their spin-off brands as well as for booking sites like Orbitz and Travelocity. If there aren't any codes available or listed, CurrentCodes will list any other promotion or special rates that it knows of at the hotels like a AAA discount or any package deals.
If you like to visit Vegas a lot, you're in luck as CurrentCodes has a ton of codes for hotels on the strip. Here Barry explains more about using the codes.
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by juliana
There's tons of hotel news flying around this week and we don't have time to give each and every story the love and attention it may deserve, so you will have to settle for some news briefs.
It's the season of 
