Extra person charges aren’t nearly as common at hotels in the U.S. as they are in Europe and other parts of the world. Here you check into a room and for the most part nobody cares if you’re one, two, three or even four people in a room. There’s very little monitoring of this.
In Europe rooms often have maximum occupancy, and that might be two. Or there’s an extra person charge for a third person. A fourth person, even a small child, might not be allowed.
That’s obviously different at all-inclusives, where more people means greater cost to the hotel and greater services provided to each guest. And a rollaway bed might be charged for an extra place for someone to sleep. But it’s easy to get used to not caring how many people are in a room, and then get surprised by practices abroad.
Many people, then, don’t pay attention to “number of guests” when searching for a hotel.
- If you enter more than two guests, a room might not show up as available since only base rooms for up to two guests are for sale.
- Or a points room might be that base room for just two guests, but you have no problem ‘fitting’ a third small child.
- And in the U.S. it won’t matter, while you may run into trouble elsewhere. Usually. In fact, sometimes you even see extra charges for a second guest on Hilton Honors points redemptions – even in the U.S..
If you just leave the default as one guest, that works out fine here but not everywhere. If you book for one guest it can be a good idea to at least communicate with the hotel in advance about the actual number of people in your room to avoid surprises at check-in.
- Are the number of people in your party allowed?
- Will there be extra person charges?
- …Will you be shaken down for a bribe? Say what?
A guest at the Marriott Autograph Collection Le Mersenne Zanzibar reports booking their room for one person, but there were two guests. They were charged an extra $86 for the second guest because they had “only one guest on the booking.”
- This fee had to be paid in cash
- The hotel didn’t want to provide a receipt
- There is supposed to be a per-person fee charged there… of $5
Tried to check in to Marriott’s le mersenne zanzibar today as a group of two since it was a relatively good points redemption. To my suprise they asked me to pay 86$ for an extra person fee on my booking because I only had one guest on the booking. This has never happened in my life of any hotel, never mind a resort with Marriott, almost every room in the world allows for two people to stay without extra costs, the maximum occupancy of the room is three?? The official Marriott bill also clearly states only a fee of 10$
They asked for this in cash of course and simply wouldn’t let me checkin until I paid. Pretty sure the hotel staff pocketed this themselves. Took hours of arguing even to get a receipt. Not sure what else to do as the property manager was openly in on this. Never expected such open corruption at a Marriott property!
As one commenter noted, “This happened to me before in another country. Complained to Mariott corporate and never heard anything.”
You’re less likely to be shaken down for a bribe in Western Europe than Africa, but also more likely to meet with inflexibility. You may find extra person charges or capacity limits in Asia. So it’s a good idea in general not to ignore the ‘number of guests’ when searching and booking your room. And if room availability changes when listing the actual number of guests, considering checking with the hotel.
Now we know why and how Marriott got enough money to buy SPG!
I’m a tad confused, someone books a room for 1 person knowing there will be 2 persons staying. Most hotels provide a breakfast, so they need to know how many guests are staying
Then, it’s the guests fault when they are charged extra ?
Every search I remember defaults to two guests. I once forgot to change it and booked for two in France. On arrival, they then reduced my bill when I confirmed I was alone. And, no, it had nothing to do with breakfast fees. I never have breakfast at hotels when it is an extra cost. It is always a bad deal in France IMHO.
@jack. I think you missed the point. Yes, the OP made a mistake and reserved for one. This issue is not paying extra if, indeed, the price would be higher if they booked correctly. The clerk appears to have come up with a scam when he saw the mismatch in reservation and guest numbers. The requirement that $86 be paid in cash with no receipt points to the scam.
Welcome to Africa. Get used to it.
I have seen hotels in Europe and the Americas that tried to stop some couples from getting back to their rooms because the hotel staff/security thought the other guest in the couple was a prostitute. In such cases, it sometimes helped that the room was actually initially booked for 2 people and that the guests already had their own luggage in the room. In some cases they tried to claim an up charge was due for the other guest in the couple because the room was booked for one. But if the room was an award room booked with the hotel’s own points, sometimes the rate plans and/or program terms are set to cover two guests and thus the shakedown or hit the highway effort by the hotels would hit a dead end or result in reimbursement because of that.
How about being honest and listing the number in your party and you will not have this problem!
@dave w Marriott site commonly defaults to one guest. I have to change it the first time I go to the site. USA not so strict but out of county properties are stricter.
Follow the rules and you rarely have a problem.
This is why you shouldn’t go to Africa. They’re thieves. They are the only ones of course but its almost to be expected there.
On the IHG website it defaults to one room one guest. I have made the mistake of not noticing this when I booked a room. It was not my intention to do this. I can see how this can happen by mistake.
Bluntly, it’s a scam run by hotel employees. $20 was the minimal to get past Immigration at Mugabe Int’l in Harare in less than eight hours, more if you had a couple suitcases. I was refused Boarding in another because I hadn’t reconfirmed the booking three days before departure. $20 solved the problem. Don’t look for hard-and-fast reasons to argue, you’re save time and angst offering half in cash and consider it a cost of doing business.
I go the extra mile when searching. So long as the cost is the same: if I need a room for 1 person I search for 2; if I need a room for 3 people I search for 4 (unless standard rooms don’t accommodate 4). This gives me the flexibility to bring an extra guest if they want to go and their schedule lines up.
If they won’t let you check in, take the walk bonus and make them pay YOU $100.
If you ever want to know why does anti black racism exist in America, this is one reason.
The upsides of booking a same cost room for one additional person in the room than is likely to be needed is that you’ll increase the chances of getting extra towels in the room and maybe can use the extra person’s spot for someone to join at breakfast for no additional charge. The downside of that in some cases is that you may end up with a rollaway bed in the room or have the sofa in the room made into a bed when you would rather have the space in the room than the extra bedding taking up the space in the room.
Extra charges for a second guest comes up maybe 50% of the time in Europe, Africa, Middle East, and Asia across Marriott and IHG for me, which is why I always search for the rate using one and two guests in those regions. One of the underrated benefits of IHG Ambassador status is that the single occupancy rate is valid for double occupancy at Intercontinental hotels, and I’ve even used the Ambassador terms and conditions to get the single occupancy rate at non-Intercontinental hotels as well.
$86 is a bargain. I booked a King bed room at the Grand Hotel Victoria at Lake Como last month. They only had very expensive suites for more than. 2 persona. Our adult son decided to join us on the trip. The three of us fit fine on a King bed so I didn’t try to change the reservation.
When we got there they made us wait outside* in 92 degrees heat (it didn’t help that two of us had a light fever.) *I went inside the air conditioned lobby and they insisted with exquisite courtesy that we wait outside).
After an hour they gave us the room (as far as I could tell they just added a bed as the room looked quite similar to the pictures of the room category we had reserved.).
This upgrade for the extra bed was a mere 200 Euros per night.
Then at checkout they added a 260 Euro restaurant charge for a dinner we had not eaten that took another 30 minutes for them to remove.
There are two issues here. Firstly, obviously, soliciting bribes is completely unacceptable.
Secondly, who cares what “normally happens” or what happens in one’s own country? Book the room for the required number of people.
At the Marriott Medellin I was staying with my friend. I had another friend visiting and went to the room. They wanted to charge $250 usd to have the third guest. Even though he wasn’t staying and was also going to be with us for a few hours before going to dinner. It was beyond ridiculous. I go t them to reduce to $42 USD but even that is egregious. Also they did not want to let me add the charge to the room. They wanted to be paid separately for it. Bunkers.
Bonvoyed!
I did a quick, dirty search using the IHG app (which does default to one person). In London, Munich, and Sydney the second person adds zero cost (none of these included a paid-for breakfast). In Paris, you paid extra to add a second to the room (not for breakfast). The reason is simple: Paris charges between €10.73 (5 star) to €2.60 (1 star) per person per night in accommodation tax that is passed on to you. Thus, if you reserve for one, but arrive with two, I’d expect to see the rate per night to go up. Of course, I still think this original case is a scam.
And, I looked up the price with Marriott for this location. The base rate is the same for one or two. With taxes and fees, it is $5 per night to add a second person.
Marriott ceased being in the hospitality business. The bean counters are running the show. Each hotel can do whatever it wants to maximize revenue.