Some hotels will offer discounts to local guests. It’s price discrimination. Those guests don’t usually need a room, but if the price is right you can get them to do a staycation. It can be the perfect way to fill empty rooms during slow periods.

Other hotels absolutely hate local guests. Why do they need a room? They want to throw a party! They don’t want to trash their own place to do it! These are the worst guests, and more trouble than they’re worth.

One Charlotte-area hotel bans them completely. They say they don’t want anyone that lives within 40 miles of the property. Surely there’s an incident that happened that explains the ’40 miles’ bit (it’s not 20, 50 or 100 miles – but a far more specific 40 miles).

Another way to get at the issue is to charge locals an extra deposit. They get the money back after checkout, once you’ve verified that they did not destroy the room. (Still another approach is a mandatory ‘damage waiver fee’ for all guests, instead of a deposit.)

Here’s one hotel that charges locals a $200 deposit on their stay. But there’s a problem with this!

The $200 in ‘fees’ (mandatory deposit) is getting shown as a part of the room cost, now that hotel chains are trying to comply with FTC rules that went into effect this month requiring prices to be shown with fees rather than just showing the fees prior to reserving the room.

The Holiday Inn Express Henderson N Evansville South hotel in Kentucky now looks like the most expensive Holiday Inn Express in the entire world.

Who is going to book the Holiday Inn Express Henderson N Evansville South when they see room rates over $300, that just aren’t competitive for the market? For this hotel, compliance with the FTC disclosure rule is actually more deceptive of consumers than failing to show full pricing previously.

Holiday Inn Express Henderson N Evansville South

I suppose you want to go the ‘up front fee’ route if you have concerns about whether the guest will be willing or able to pay after the fact. If their credit card won’t support extra charges, or they don’t care about their loyalty account, the hotel might find damage costs uncollectable.

Some Marriotts are charging guests for staining towels, but they can throw all the charges they want with someone – it does little good if the funds can’t be collected.

And anyone can cause damage – it’s not just partiers. Just see what happens when hanging clothes on a fire sprinkler. The better approach, now that these fees are showing up and making the property look exorbitantly expensive, might just be to call the cops on parties before any damage gets done? Put out free donuts and coffee and make the hotel a place cops are happy to stop by first, of course.

(HT: Joe R.)