Tag: hotels

Booking Hotel Rooms for a Group? Here Are Some Tips

Posted in The New York TimesTagged , ,

No one told my wife and me that planning a wedding would be easy, but we thought reserving a hotel block — a cluster of 10 rooms or more, at a reduced rate, at a hotel where our out-of-town guests could stay — would be a cinch.

Things started out smoothly. We found a modern hotel from a big hotel chain that had more than enough rooms to accommodate our guests. The hotel was only a couple of blocks away from our wedding location. It offered a competitive room block rate of 10 percent off the regular rate (which at the time we thought was a good deal). It had four stars on TripAdvisor. So we signed a contract.

I wish we hadn’t.

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Read This Before You Use Hotel Wi-Fi

Posted in Budget TravelTagged , , , ,

When it comes to booking a hotel, Wi-Fi is an absolute must for most travelers. Indeed, when asked what services are of particular importance to them, 80 percent of hotel guests said that Internet access is the most crucial, a recent Statista survey of personal and business travelers found.

That data echoes a survey from English hotelier Roomzzz, which found that 65 percent of hotel guests go online within seven minutes of checking in at their hotel, and one third of hotel guests request the Wi-Fi password as soon as they arrive. Granted, that’s not really a surprise, considering you need a good Internet connection to stream the latest episode of, say, “House of Cards” without experiencing slowdowns.

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Beware of These Hidden Hotel Fees

Posted in Budget TravelTagged , ,

Last year U.S. hotels collected more than Hotel service bell$2.5 billion in fees and surcharges, up from $2.45 billion in 2015 according to research by Bjorn Hanson, a professor at New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism.

Hanson credits the uptick to the nation’s thriving travel industry. “When times are financially difficult, hotels are more concerned about offending guests with extra charges, but when the economy is doing well hotels feel more confident about increasing their fees,” says Hanson, who has tracked U.S. hotel fees and surcharges data since 2000.

Unfortunately for travelers, many hotel fees are often buried in lengthy disclosure statements or tucked into bill summaries at checkout.

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