Nevada Holiday Inn Express Outed: Charging For Electricity, Floods TripAdvisor With Fake Reviews To Cover It Up

by Gary Leff

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)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Earlier this week I called out the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Elko, Nevada

    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.

  2. 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?

  3. It just goes to show that the best reviews are not from reviewers that post only one review on Tripadvisor.

  4. 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

  5. @ SFO/EWR:

    Punching down… on whom? The hotel? I assure you it’s a larger business than either Gary’s or Ben’s website.

  6. The recent shill reviews for this property have been removed by TripAdvisor. Kudos to them for the quick action.

  7. 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.

  8. 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 (:

  9. 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?

  10. The larger question is when the FTC or somebody will crack down on this junk fee plague. If it’s not a tax imposed by an entity with taxing authority, and it’s not avoidable, it needs to be in the quoted price. They are simply lying about their prices.

  12. Thatnks for outing them. If the credit card surcharge is not disclosed in advance (before making the reservation) then they should not be allowed to charge it.

    If IHG allows this, they are letting their brand go down as a bad brand.

  13. The sudden appearance of several 5 star reviews is not, in and of itself, sufficient evidence to conclude the reviews are from hotel employees. It’s possible the hotel reacted to the negative publicity by going out of their way to ask all satisfied guests to leave reviews. Customers who seem satisfied actually actually be lobbied to leave great reviews at MUCH higher than historical or expected rates — IF they are asked for the review in a nice but imploring way, and pledge to leave a review. Open mouths can and do get fed, more often than you might imagine.

  14. I full believe SFO/EWR is a shill for the hotel. No way anyone defends such fees. Likely the same person who was writing the Trip Advisor reviews.

  15. 20 or 30 years ago, New Jersey hotels we’re trying to do this crap.
    The state prosecutor got after them real fast.

    still just love the $3 hotel safe fee, I was complained and walked out after they pulled this on me.
    Resort fees that are often more than the rock right are another wonderful pet peeve.

    Hotels are almost as ethical as used car places lately and they’re going to get their backsides swacked by some smart Congress person

  16. Thank you, Gary, for amplifying this story. Failing to bring attention to egregious charges will only encourage more to do so. The posting of many highly sus positive reviews post publicity appears to be a clear attempt to deflect attention away from the shady practice. What reason is there to run away from this if there’s “nothing to see here?”

Comments are closed.