Luxury hotels in NYC offering a free night stay

by Jamie Rhein on

“Strike when the iron is hot” is a proverb for these times when it comes to taking advantage of a travel bargain. Cruises aren’t the only places to find a deal–even if the deal may start off pricey.

For those heading to New York City before February 28, ten luxury hotels are offering a third night free when you book two nights. This can be a hefty savings of more than $300. Sure, you have to come up with enough money for the two nights, but there are inexpensive things to do the city which can take off the sting off the sticker price.

The participating hotels are:

To take advantage of these deals called “Signature Collection Third Night,” click on this link for the promotional code for the hotel of your choice.

Making a reservation over the phone is recommended. In addition to the third night free, guests who take advantage of the offer, receive other deals at places like Saks Fifth Avenue where you can get a free cup of coffee and a complimentary dessert at the store’s Cafe SFA.

Fat finger deals – should your airline or hotel honor them?

by Scott Carmichael on

A fat finger deal is the name given to airline deals where someone “with fat fingers” missed a zero, or put a comma in the wrong place when entering air or hotel prices.

The deals pop up more often than you’d think in this day and age, but airlines are starting to fight back. In recent years, some of the better fat finger deals would get you from the US to most European destinations for $20, or from LA to Fiji for just $50.

The mistakes are human, and despite all the computerized air fare systems, at the end of the day there is still someone locked away in an office who is responsible for loading the thousands of various air fare combinations into a computer terminal, and I’m sure we all know that when people get involved, something will eventually go wrong.

In the past, airlines would do one of several things;

  • Ignore the problem and let people benefit from the screw-up
  • Let people know the deal would be honored, but only on a smaller scale, hotels would let people stay a few nights instead of the months they’d often book
  • Let people take the trip AND try to benefit from all the good PR they create by honoring it

Nowadays airline are in a world of hurt, and any kind of screw-up that could cost them money has to come to an end. When passengers grab one of these fat finger deals, the airline will simply cancel it, and in most cases won’t even bother to inform them.

A natural reaction to this behavior is that the airline is perfectly within its rights to do so – it was an honest mistake, and they have page after page of fine print protecting their business practices. But there is one very simply reason why I don’t think the airlines deserve to get off easy – mistakes are not a one way street.

If you book a non refundable hotel room and made a mistake entering the date, you are screwed. If you book a ticket on the airline, but make a spelling error in your name, some airlines will charge you $90 to fix it. Airlines have perfected the art of making money off your mistakes, but when they mess up, they simply make the problem go away.

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Dirtiest Hotels in the United States

by Mike Barish on

Hotels are filthy places. As fellow Gadling blogger Scott recently told us, hotel rooms aren’t always cleaned as well as we would like. Imagine how many people have touched that television remote before you arrived. Or, for your sanity’s sake, don’t. And for the love of all that you consider holy, do not run a blacklight over your sheets and bedspread. But some hotels are filthier than others. And the folks at TripAdvisor have used reader reviews to compile their annual list of Dirtiest Hotels in the United States.

New York City (where I live) is home to two of the “top” three dirtiest hotels. Coming in at number one is the Hotel Carter and at number three is the New York Inn. The reader reviews for the Hotel Carter don’t pull any punches.

Roaches, rats, mice, horrible smells, dirty sheets, horrifying bathrooms, outlets that hang out of walls…

This hotel was the filthiest,most unsanitary place I have seen ever. From the smell when you walk into the room to the plastic wrapped around the mattresses.

There are bed bugs in this hotel and you don´t easily see these bugs, but after one night you see the bites and they itch terribly for many days!

Welcome To Hell.

It could be worse than bed bugs, though. You could find a corpse under your bed, which a housekeeper at the Hotel Carter did in 2007. The upside to this story? It proves that they have housekeepers!

Strange Hotels from Around the World


Mischarged? Stand your ground!

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Mistakes happen, and we’ve all been on both sides of errors. So, if you find that a hotel has overcharged you – or charged you for services you didn’t consume – keep a cool head. If you remain pleasant and reasonable, the situation can generally be fixed pretty quickly. On rare occasions, however, you’ll meet with a bit of resistance.

As Christopher Elliott wrote on CNN.com, the hotels have a lot at stake in not reversing the charges associated with in-room entertainment. Since it splits the revenue with a third party (such as LodgeNet), the hotel is on the hook for up to half the fee, even if the charge was erroneous. In the case that Elliott presents, the front desk staff offered to cut the charge in half.

Do not let a hotel push this alternative on you.

A charge that is not yours is a charge you should not pay. Stand your ground. Ask to speak to increasingly higher ranking personnel at the hotel. Eventually, it is more expensive for them to talk to you than it is to swallow the charge. If you have to dash out to the airport, register your objection in writing.

If you still have not been able to settle the problem, take your complaint public. Visit the many travel review sites (such as Trip Advisor) and explain your situation. Many hotels do read these reviews and reply to customer complaints there. Take action, and they will have to, as well.

[Via CNN]

Confessions of a hotel maid – read if you dare!

by Scott Carmichael on

I’m pretty sure I won’t have to tell any of you just how unsanitary many hotel rooms are.

We’ve all heard about the exposés on TV where someone would shine a CSI style ultraviolet lamp around the bed, lighting up the kind of stains you really wish you had not known about.

MSNBC has posted an article from a former hotel housekeeping staff member – and the story may make you think twice about drinking out of the bathroom cup.

For starters, after several weeks on the job, she decided that using the vacuum was just too much work, and simply picked the worst of the crumbs off the floor by hand.

Once she learned the in’s and out’s of how the room inspector worked, she even stopped cleaning sinks and simply wiped them dry to make them appear clean. Sometimes she was not in a “scrub the tub” kind of mood, and simply did a quick spray and wipe.

Thankfully she informs us that she never skipped changing the sheets – apparently even a hotel maid has her limits as to how low she will go.

Of course, things are not just bad for the guests. The housekeeper describes an incident where someone had soiled their bed linens so badly that all the sheets had to be disposed of in a biohazard bag. Sleep well!

I wonder if the housekeeping is more attentive in any of these ultra-weird hotels: