Less than two months ago I wrote about a Marriott Aloft hotel that has a sign in guests rooms that they will charge up to $50 per dirty towel that cannot be fully cleaned.
Hotels are nickel and diming guests for things I never used to hear of their charging extra for. The Aloft hotel in McAllen, Texas reportedly billed a guest $80.50 for washcloths because she used them to remove makeup.
I just received my statement this morning from Aloft in a smaller market for a business trip last week and noticed there was an $80.50 additional charge on my bill. I called the hotel and I was told it was for damage. I asked them for what damage and they told me for 6 washcloths. I asked for 6 additional washcloths when I checked in as I was my face in the morning and wash my makeup off in the evening.
I requested pictures in which I was told they would email me, I have yet to receive them as this just happened a couple of hours ago. I’m also waiting on the manager to call me when he gets in around noon. I have never in all my 620 nights and 24 years been charged a damaged fee.
Edit: It’s now 7 washcloths at $10 each not including two different types of tax as the email I received from the hotel this afternoon now states. They emailed me the breakdown of the charges and said pictures were attached to the email and they were not. I have requested pictures 4 times now. Manager will not return my call.
The guest reports not having housekeeping for their room during their entire stay (hence the request for extra washcloths) so it seems to me that the hotel saved more than the cost of the washcloths, and should call it even?
Meanwhile a guest at the Marriott Courtyard Cancun airport had a nosebleed that cost them $461 for getting it on their sheets.
I woke up with a heavy nosebleed about an hour before I was supposed to check out, which got all over the bedding. Blanket and sheet layers, no mattress or pillows.
I bled out in the bathroom and cleaned up all tissues, sink, and put everything disposable in the trash can before I left. I left a $20 bill USD in the room and had to leave for a van without letting anyone know before check out.
I just got sent an invoice with a total cost of 9,424 MXN
Mattress Cover: 2,074
King size sheet: 3,984
Top sheet: 732
Blanket: 2,642…I stayed here under company travel and my supervisor informed me it’s my responsibility (which I understand and can pay reasonable costs, but I don’t think this is?). I gross under $40kUSD/yr and cannot afford this at all. I don’t stay in hotels at all while not working but I do have a Silver Marriott account that I attached to the reservation
Now, this was a business trip. The employer should have their back. But is the hotel reasonable here? Should a guest be on the hook for all damages, or should the hotel absorb this – a certain percentage of guests will incur more wear than usual?
There’s no way the hotel is spending so much sheets, given bulk purchasing arrangements, and at most shouldn’t the guest be responsible for their depreciated value (these likely weren’t first-use brand new sheets)? Isn’t charging a guest – rather than expressing concern – when they have a medical issue sort of the opposite of what a hotel is supposed to do (hospitality)?
And why does this seem to be happening with Marriott franchise properties especially? Or is it? A guest was banned from a Southern California DoubleTree hotel while visiting Disneyland and billed $150 after getting blood on towels that were in the bathroom after a leg shaving accident.
Just stayed in the aloft near MIA and it is apparently a hot spot for ladies getting surgery (over heard two of them calling Marriott about the rate increasing for the night and she’s having surgery at 2pm and can’t sit for the next two days to drive to another hotel). So much so, they have a sign posted at the check in desk that there is an extra $500 hold on all surgery rooms. If housekeeping finds any leakage in the “surgery” rooms, the hold will be converted into $500 incidental fee due to linen damages.
Seems as if it’s becoming a trend in Marriott properties.
Not to mention, the towels were extra scratchy anyway. New towels wouldn’t hurt the place.
I do a lot of cocaine and thus get a lot of nosebleeds. I am skeptical of a hotel not being able to launder out the blood stains. Especially since hotels use industrial strength laundry detergent that contains chemicals banned in consumer detergents.
This Karen needs to invest in makeup wipes. She would surely go into Karen mode if she was given a stained wash cloth.
I own an Airbnb and one guests left blood all over the sheets. I had to throw them away. Accidents do happen but if it were me, I would immediately put the sheets in cold water. It’s not fair that I should have to purchase new sheets because a guests ruined them. Especially makeup, you should not use white towels to remove makeup. It doesn’t come out. Every time guests do this, they need to be replaced.
So now besides the usual checks upon arrival in a hotel room (bedbugs, mini-bar inventory, etc) I’m going to have to examine every inch of every piece of bedding, towels, etc? I’ll take great glee when I find the tiniest mark and insist that housekeeping re-make the entire room to MY satisfaction and replace the offending items with NEW items. I guess I’ll also have to examine the entire carpet for stains and insist on a complete different room lest I get charged for a carpet cleaning/replacement.
Likely this will considerably impact the hotel’s bottom line and staffing requirements!
What really surprises me about this is the hotels being so penny wise and pound foolish. I as a guest in a similar situation would do a chargeback on ridiculous charges like that. Also the sheer ill will from bad moves like that will induce folks to stay away in the future and leave really harsh reviews. This really epitomizes bad decision making from ivory tower executives.
I’m on team don’t use wash cloths for makeup removal, but also don’t use replacements as a profit center.
Blood on sheets comes / bleaches out if handled in an appropriate time assuming white sheets… which I thought was the whole reason hotels used white bedding?
As a frequent nose bleeder in winter who has bled on numerous sheets / pillow cases over the years, I can say I’ve never been billed for it. (I do ask for a bedding change if it’s mid-stay.)
Billing for bloody sheets is also a bad policy if you hope to attract honeymoon bookings. (Ok maybe not in the US…)
I don’t think it’s an absurd fee. The guests should use the hotel properties as his own goods. 150 dollars seemed stiff but lesson learned
Since room service has been curtailed of late, I just raid the cleaning cart for fresh towels or ask for a set at the front desk. Should I have a soiled towel, I’ll take it home. Buy the time I’m checking out, I’ll have a stack of towels and the attendant won’t know the true count.
@Don G
You, sir, are a glutton for punishment. I don’t kink shame. You do you.
This feels like Jasper from The Simpsons: ‘That’s a paddlin’ but it’s $150 charges. ‘That’s a $150.. that’s a $150..’ a bit excessive, no?
So many people removed their makeup with them you might as well trash them! I worked and at hotels and couldn’t understand why they keep doing that and we had to just toss the towels and face towels
Makeup won’t stain washcloths if you use bar soap instead of liquid. I found this out when I had Airbnb units. The move to liquid soap is the problem. After switching to bar soap, I never had makeup that wouldn’t come out with detergent and bleach.
Most Marriott’s (& many other hotels I’ve worked with) use a towel service. The towels get all bundled up in bins & sent out. They’re generic white small scratchy towels that get tossed into very large cleaners filled with bleach & other chemicals so they come out just as white & scratchy as they were originally. There’s really no reason to do this esp when the value of said towel is about $1. OK perhaps $2. The point is very few of these towels end up being tossed because of stains. I really hope the maids get a sizeable portion of any fee charged for a stained towel because if they do not – they should not bother to waste their time separating & reporting these. By sizeable I mean like 75%. BTW I always leave a small tip & never once had my dirty towels reported!
@gary: in all cases you only give one side of these reports and then try to “judge” them. This debases your newsletter and doesn’t inform your readers.
It would be nice to hear that the hotel has been offered the opportunity to respond after you sending them a guest-signed privacy waiver
I can’t believe what I am reading. These hotels are in the business of hospitality, serving flesh-and-blood human beings. Live bodies that ooze fluids from all sorts of orifices, bodies that eat, drink, and (hopefully) bathe. Colds, stomach flu, food poisoning, menstrual issues, norovirus – c’mon, people are going to have issues. If a hotel doesn’t want to be imposed upon with having guests dirty the sheets and towels, then maybe the hotels should get out of the hospitality business and into something that doesn’t deal with humans, like manufacturing cardboard boxes or maintaining a data center.
The other alternative is for the hotel to provide disposable makeup wipes or dark colored towels. One ABNB I stayed at had rolled, brown facecloths in a cutesy basket, labeled “for makeup removal”. The host also had coordinating towels in the same color. Granted, they aren’t white but then again, they don’t show stains.
Do do they wash the alleged dirty towels separately to make sure they didn’t come clean?
I had this happen to me at a Hyatt saying I soiled a towel. The charge was $20 or so. I just disputed with the credit card. No issue.
@L3
Wow, bootlick, much? I thought you were a right-wing troll, not a corporate shill. If you are the same L3 who blamed the recent tragic midair collision on ‘DEI,’ you have no legitimacy to ‘virtue signal’ against VFTW. Use your ‘common sense’—this website is not the Associated Press. Gary shared recently how he started this site ‘on a lark,’ and clearly it’s grown over the years. That said, he never purported to be an investigative reporter. If you want the hotel’s side of the story, go pay $150 for one of their bloody towels!