"incidental charges"

Debrarene · March 2012

Does anyone know if these are everywhere? I did a room block at the cosmo and they stated for each night in addition to the room rates there is a $150 authorization for incidental charges....

07ultraclassic · March 2012

They ask nearly everytime we go if we want to leave such a charge open and we decline. We tell them we want to pay cash. It's billed at the front counter upon check-in, and not before.

To clarify: we've never stayed at this hotel specifically, but we've stayed at nearly every OTHER hotel there and it's not mandatory.

bbuckner984 · March 2012

yes, that is pretty typical, especially at the nicer hotels. I stayed at the Cosmo before and it was actually that per day. They have super nice stuff in the mini bar and around there that they will charge for against that fee.

But, IMO- the Cosmo is worth whatever they throw at you. I wish it was in our budget for the wedding.

udream05 · March 2012

This is customary for most hotels. And neccessary if guests want to be able to charge back to their room. However, like pp said if guests don't want to charge to their rooms they can negotiate to pay the cash deposit up front and the room rates plus tax and have the charging turned off. Some type of deposit is still required should anything happen. Especially if you're leaving cash up front, if the room gets destroyed they have no way of getting any reimbursement for that. If guests do want chargine priviledges make sure they put it on the credit card and not a debit, on the CC it only goes out for an authorization on the debit card, it's a hard charge and then they have to wait to get the money back at the end.

murphanzo · March 2012

I work at a hotel and yes, you have to provide a cc. You can pay for the room cash and opt to have charging turned off to the room, so you'll have to pay cash or with a card at all outlets, but you'll still need to put a card on file in the event you damage something in the room and are held liable (i.e. pull a Charlie Sheen). The inc. charge is what they have figured guests spend on average a day there, if you're there 3 nights and they authorize $150, guests spend $50/nt. If you go out one night and charge up $100 to the room your card will be authorized again to cover those charges as as well as the remaining days.

HTH!