San Francisco Hotels Ripping Off Stranded Travelers?

Hotels in the San Francisco area have come under scrutiny for price gouging following the Asiana Airlines plane crash on Saturday.

Thousands of flights were postponed or cancelled following the tragedy, leaving many travelers stranded in the city. Apparently, the sudden surge in demand for hotels led many establishments to up their prices – in some instances, dramatically so.

According to an NBC News report, mid-range hotels in San Francisco (which typically charge around $100-200 per night) were listing their rooms for ten times the usual rate. One example included a Best Western hotel, which had bumped its sticker price from $149 to a whopping $999 for a one-night stay.When later probed about the sky-high room rate, Best Western claimed that the advertised rate was a “mistake” and told Hotelchatter that no guests were actually charged the $999 rate. Instead, they were charging $309 versus the usual $149 rate.

NBC found many other hotels in the city were also charging significantly above the usual tariff.

We want to know, have you seen or been asked to pay an exorbitant price for a San Francisco hotel room following the plane crash?

$7 Bottles of Water: Refreshing Or In Bad Taste?

Have you ever been desperate enough to pay $7 for a bottle of water in a hotel room? I drink tap water in any country where it’s safe and stockpile store-bought water in countries like Mexico, where it isn’t, so I never really get caught needing to pay extortionate prices for bottled water or anything else from hotel minibars.

Last week, I stayed at the Marriott Fallsview Hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and, although I enjoyed my stay, I couldn’t help but wonder – who pays the $6.95 they charge for the bottles of Aquafina water they place in the room?

It wouldn’t be priced as such if no one were buying it, right?
Someone at Marriott who sits in a nice office with plush furniture must have decided that $6.95 – not $4.95 or $5.95 – was the optimal price for this item at this location.

Clearly people on expense accounts or the ultra rich might not balk at the price. And I’m not a “skip lunch because there are children starving in Africa” kind of guy, but with 40% of the world’s population living on less than $2 per day, I don’t think I could bring myself to engage in this sort of little extravagance – definitely not in a city where millions of gallons of water are literally gushing over Niagara Falls.