Earlier this week I called out the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Elko, Nevada for charging:
- a $12.95 “energy recovery fee” to every guest, not included in the room rate
- a 3% surcharge for paying by credit card
Electricity isn’t included in your room rate, apparently, and you’re penalized for paying with a Chase IHG credit card at this IHG property.
One Mile at a Time then called them out as well. Now they’ve gone into damage control leaving fake reviews of themselves on TripAdvisor.
- It appears they hadn’t had a review in a couple of months before getting called out over their energy fee and 3% credit card fee. Then all of a sudden they have a rash of perfect reviews!
- One of their house reviews even gets defensive over the 3% credit card surcharge because at check-in “it said on the credit card reader that there was a 3% surcharge if I chose to use a credit card.”
At least this hotel doesn’t charge extra to use the bathroom mirror?
(HT: Joe R)
This is punching down and OMAAT was dogpiling on. Extremely unclassy behavior. Yes, it’s bad that this hotel charges junk fees, but they’re far from the only ones to do so and it makes no sense to call them out as they’re an obscure hotel and the fees are not even that egregious. It’s not like they’re charging a $1,000 fee for snoring in your own room.
Ultimately, if any hotel guest is mad about this fee, the solution is to either QQ more (that’s 2010s-era speak for keep crying) or to become equity partner at a firm like Kirkland & Ellis.
I guarantee not a single equity partner at Kirkland or a peer firm is giving even a second thought to 3% CC surcharges or $12.95 electricity fees. When your profit per equity partner exceeds $8MM, you stop worrying about things like this in your life. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?
It just goes to show that the best reviews are not from reviewers that post only one review on Tripadvisor.
I just sent the CEO and also chief executive officer of InterContinental hotels group this article. I will post if I get a reply from them
@ SFO/EWR:
Punching down… on whom? The hotel? I assure you it’s a larger business than either Gary’s or Ben’s website.
The recent shill reviews for this property have been removed by TripAdvisor. Kudos to them for the quick action.
It all goes back to hotel chains having better control over their franchisees. You have 4-5 star hotel franchisees signing contracts with the government to house illegal immigrants and homeless because they can get the full/rack rate.
Punching down is not when a hotel
a. charges fees they should be called out for
b. then tries to game reviews (against the platform’s terms of services) to cover up their silly fees
Unconvinced @SFO/EWR isn’t a paid reviewer on behalf of the Holiday Inn Elko (:
I presume you need a credit card and photo ID to check in. But if you use that card to pay, there’s a 3% surcharge??? Hmm. OTOH, there is a duopoly of MasterCard and Visa that controls most CC payments in the USA. Wasn’t the Justice Department looking into this?