![]() ![]() At higher-end hotels, a staff member will likely reach out to you prior to arrival to make sure everything’s arranged to your liking. If you don’t want to book on the phone, there should be a comment section where you can type in special requests. The reservationist’s job is to convey all of this data to the front desk and housekeeping teams so they can take care of the details before you arrive. ![]() Want reservations at their restaurant? Let them know. You can also request a room on a higher floor, away from the elevator, or with non-adjoining rooms. This is the best time to tell the hotel if you’ll be arriving early (there are no guarantees prior to check-in time, but staff can flag your room to be cleaned first). But, it’s an ideal time to have a chat with a staff member about your hotel needs. I know it’s old-fashioned, but part of my process as a hotel inspector at Forbes Travel Guide was to call the hotel’s reservation hotline and make a booking with their reservation team. Here are 21 secrets hotels won’t tell you. There are lots of third-party hotel booking reservation horror stories out there. If something goes wrong, like the need to cancel or change the dates of stay, the hotel is way more likely to work with you to find a solution or reschedule for the same price if you’ve booked with them. If you find a great deal on a third-party booking site, the hotel will often price match it to keep your business with them directly.Īccountability is also important. Hotels usually keep the best rooms for themselves to sell directly to guests. ![]() More importantly, third-party booking sites usually get the worst and tiniest rooms – the rooms that haven’t yet been renovated or are located near the noisy ice machine. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cash in on a suite upgrade or complimentary bottle of Champagne. After all, we’re trying to figure out how hotels actually treat real guests. Note that hotel inspectors are actually trained to look for special treatment, and we might abandon an inspection if we think we’ve been flagged by staff. You might be flagged as a hotel critic or writer and be given special treatment. For one thing, most hotel inspectors book directly. But once you’ve decided where to stay, book directly with the hotel. Hotel booking websites, like TripAdvisor and, are an easy online way to figure out which hotels in your price range have open rooms. Look out for these 10 red flags you’re about to stay at a bad hotel. Here are some of the hotel secrets I learned over the years. The hotels ranged from tiny bed-and-breakfasts in Italy to enormous all-inclusive resorts in Cozumel to trendy boutique hotel openings in Los Angeles. The two jobs were vastly different, but over the span of my career, I’ve slept in several hundred hotels for review purposes on five continents. After visiting, I’d write a hotel summary and guide explaining the hotel’s pros, cons, location, rooms and features, accompanied by the photographs. I’d often spend the night, but not always. At Oyster, the hotel staff usually knew I was coming and gave me a tour and access to take photographs. The hotels were almost always ultra-expensive and emphasised personalised service and stunning locations. I ran each hotel through a series of identical service and facility tests to give it a star rating (yep, that’s how Forbes assigns five-star hotels). I also had to count closet hangers, photograph bathtub grime, and memorise hotel staff names and uniforms.įor Forbes Travel Guide, I anonymously booked two to three nights in luxury hotels. I really did get paid to order room service, sit by infinity pools, and ensure the cocktails were made with high-quality booze. Though it sounds like a made-up job for a protagonist in a rom-com, I can assure you that inspecting and photographing hotels was very much my real life. I worked as a hotel inspector and photographer for seven years at Forbes Travel Guide and (a TripAdvisor company). ![]()
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