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I read a lot of travel blogs and sites, and am often intrigued by different sites. Many times I will group them into a post to share (since I understand that not everyone is reading travel blogs all day every day :-D).  But sometimes it spawns my own thoughts and merits its own best. I originally wrote this post after reading over on Rapid Travel Chai where he shared his biggest hotel annoyance. His was checkout times before noon – and shared a story of having a 7:30 a.m. checkout time imposed on him!

My biggest hotel annoyances

So after reading Stefan’s post, I thought I’d share some of my biggest hotel annoyances. Over the years as I’ve updated this post, I also solicited some of the biggest hotel annoyances from the members of the free Points With a Crew miles and points Facebook group

1. Resort Fees

Just like airline “fuel surcharges”, these bogus fees are just increased prices in disguise, and worse yet, often are applied on rewards stays.

My (least) favorite part of resort fees are when hotels try to justify them by saying “Resort fee is for use of the pool and fitness center and blah blah blah” and then I ask to opt-out of using those things.  Somehow the hotel employee does not quite understand my joke / logic…

2. No ability to specify / avoid adjoining or connecting rooms

Now granted, this is more of a “me” problem that doesn’t affect other people, but for our family of 8, I would say that having 2 adjoining rooms is the most important thing that we look for in a hotel. I know that many people traveling on their own or with smaller families specifically want to AVOID adjoining rooms, which makes sense.

(SEE ALSO: Why are adjoining hotel rooms so hard to get?)

(SEE ALSO: This Hotel Chain FINALLY Lets You Book Adjoining Hotel Rooms)

It makes the difference between my sharing a bed with my wife and sharing a bed with a wiggly 7 year old.  I always request it, but sometimes it’s not possible, and sometimes the hotels don’t even HAVE adjoining rooms.  I don’t feel like whether a hotel has adjoining rooms is adequately disclosed on the hotel website

3. Hotels weaseling out of Best Rate Guarantees

I also hate when hotels seemingly offer a “Best Rate Guarantee” but then use weasely tactics to get out of it.  One common strategy is assigning only a specific type of rooms to be sold via Orbitz, Expedia, Priceline, etc., then not including those on their site.  Since the room types don’t match, they deny the claim, even though when you arrive at the hotel, they’re the exact same room.  For instance, it took me 5 tries to get a BRG approved at Best Western!

4. Asking for my kids’ ages at booking

a screenshot of a computer

Why Hyatt?!?!??? Why does this matter?  It changes zero about anything (unless I’m missing something?)

5. Crappy (and expensive) wifi

Thankfully most hotels are to the point where you get “free” wifi if you are at all a member of their loyalty program.  If not, that is a separate annoyance.  But perhaps even more frustrating is when the provided wifi SUCKS.  I think we’ve all been there to know that bad wifi is probably worse than no wifi at all…

Honorable mentions:

  • Hotels that charge a lot for parking – this is annoying but I’d only count this as truly annoying if the parking charge is out of line with parking rates at similar non-hotel places in the same area.  Like I stayed in Downtown Chicago and the parking was $45 / night but that’s about how much it would have cost to park anywhere else in the area.
  • Lack of recognition of elite benefits – I am not a huge “But I am a Diamond Guest” kind of guy, but I am a “rule follower”, so it irritates me when hotels have very clear statements of what elites should expect at a hotel and then those benefits are not honored
  • Lack of outlets near things – Or its cousin, all the plus already filled with lamps / clocks / other things

So there are some of my hotel annoyances. What about you? I know I saw Trips with Tykes shared a story recently about a hotel trying to give them a pack and play with an OUTDOOR FURNITURE CUSHION as the mattress?!?!

The Bottom Line

It seems like we’ve talked a bit about the WORST things that can happen here on the blog – maybe that’s just more entertaining than hearing about the BEST of travel 🙂

So, I want to hear it – what’s YOUR biggest hotel annoyance?  Leave a note in the comments


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