A Holiday Inn attempts bribery to gain positive reviews

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• JamesWag says:

  27 Jun27 June 09:48

  That is an absolute disgrace.

• Bob says:

  27 Jun27 June 10:01

  Different, and not bribery – a hotel indigo we stayed at in Berlin had a good idea which I havent seen elsewhere – they gave a voucher for bar credit if you skipped having your room cleaned one day. Most hotels hope you’ll put out the sign to skip housekeeping but this was a good little incentive which wouldn’t have cost them much to provide.

  • tony says:

    27 Jun27 June 12:27

    hmm….

    I’m going to guess that the cost of servicing a room at an indigo is in the region of £30. About 20% of that will be wages. You’re getting a £5 beer out of it.

    The hotel saves £30 and some poor chambermaid who is probably working two jobs just to get by is suddenly 1hr down in terms of work.

    Great for the shareholders, until you get the disenfranchised underclass hitting back like we saw last week.

    • Bob says:

      27 Jun27 June 13:57

      That’s a good point – my own experiences have only been of housekeepers looking pleased/relieved when told they skip doing our room, I didn’t realise they would prefer people to leave them messy and time consuming.

    • Bob says:

      27 Jun27 June 14:35

      Also, tony, as you’re so astute about these things – how much you leave housekeepers as a tip? Do you do the $1/day, the $1/guest/day, or more?

      • tony says:

        27 Jun27 June 15:30

        I don’t tip them. They are paid by the hotel for performing that service. In much the same way as a pilot is when I buy an air ticket.

        The point is the hotel is saving way more than you get in compensation for not having the room serviced. Yes the environment benefits because there’s no more small soaps going into circulation and your towels don’t get washed, but If they can get 15 people doing this every day then that’s a housekeeper out of a job!

        • harry says:

          27 Jun27 June 15:45

          Odd logic you employ there, Tony…

          Let’s leave it there, maybe 🙂

        • Leo says:

          27 Jun27 June 16:23

          Blimey I never thought I would agree with Harry on anything…. unusual times indeed!

        • Steve says:

          28 Jun28 June 08:15

          You’ll probably find that per room they have a set time. 17 minutes to clean an en-suite king room for example. This includes changing all the linens etc.

          If the room is a mess and they spend more time cleaning it, it just puts them behind, and I’ll bet getting paid for running past their allowed time is not an option.

  • ankomonkey says:

    27 Jun27 June 13:26

    SPG have been giving points for skipping a room clean in certain hotels for years…

  • John says:

    27 Jun27 June 13:32

    Crowne Plaza Heathrow offered bonus points for not having room cleaned on stays of more than 2 nights I think? Can’t remember the exact details. I’m guessing they mainly have ppl staying for 1 night though and its an attempt to try and reduce the number of rooms to clean than save money.. they argue the ‘green’ aspects of it

  • Fenny says:

    27 Jun27 June 19:23

    The Crowne Plaza in Copenhagen will give you a Kr75 F&B credit for passing on one day’s cleaning. I was only there for 2 nights and didn’t notice this until the second day, so I missed out on a drink.

• Liz says:

  27 Jun27 June 10:15

  Hotels.com offered me a double rewards voucher for a review on our recent stay – as it was I did score it high as it was a lovely place. Voucher now received.

  • Doug M says:

    27 Jun27 June 11:07

    I use hotels.com a fair bit, say 40 nights per year, and always leave honest reveiws. I left one very honest review of a decent hotel and an appaling room and they didn’t publish it, first review they’d failed to publish. Completely changed my view of the value of reviews, since previously my reviews had been neutral to good, and all published. I’m easily pleased and fairly undemanding, so long as things are honest. I like hotels that offer small incentives to skip housekeeping, not something I ever need anyway.

    • Lady London says:

      27 Jun27 June 23:18

      I always expect to see some negative reviews and I look at the so-so ones too. I expect to see a balance otherwise I’m very wary. I contribute a lot of reviews on various things but mostly only when I feel I’ve something to add or a different take on things – but only on websites and for products I care about.

      Like most of us even if I’ve got something not so good to say about a hotel or restaurant experience the one thing I will always do is I really try to protect the staff and be as positive as possible about them. After all, they’re only trying to earn a living and I always think ‘that could be me, if I wasn’t so lucky as I am ‘ so I’m as helpful as possible to them.

• Nick G says:

  27 Jun27 June 20:48

  As I’m reading this article an email from TA popped up saying how good a reviewer I am keep up the good reviews blah blah. Coincidence or some kind of magic algorithms?! Or maybe rob is in on it all along

  • Lady London says:

    27 Jun27 June 23:20

    You can blame Google. They’re watching you. They’re the best at it. Even Yahoo is not too bad at tracking you, drawing conclusions and up pops the relevant ad.

• Tom Murray says:

  27 Jun27 June 23:03

  On a recent trip to Nova Scotia we needed to pull our accommodation forward as we decided to skip a day as the loads on our return to the UK were looking better the day before.

  No problem with one B&B inn, but the other ‘could’ do it but hoped in advance that we could leave an ‘Excellent’ TA review on departure……

  We didn’t, because we really couldn’t. It was just not warranted.

  • harry says:

    28 Jun28 June 08:10

    Lovely wee anecdote – thanks

• Abu says:

  27 Jun27 June 23:09

  Yes, this reminds me of reviews I left for items on Tesco to stop other people from being tricked by their misleading product presentation. The description was massively misleading and my review sort to clarify this. Because the review was poor, it didn’t get published.

  Last week Argos asked for feedback three times. Annoyingly, they did this after I provided feedback at the first time of asking. I subsequent wrote to them asking them why they kept bombarding me with this spam.. and then an hour later another request for feedback.

  How can these companies operate in this way. Big business doesn’t know what it’s doing while it pursues £

• Lumma says:

  28 Jun28 June 07:12

  I remember a while ago searching on trip advisor for a curry house in London and the best rated one had several bad reviews saying they’d been offered free things to write a good review before eating…

• Ken says:

  28 Jun28 June 09:27

  I booked a hotel in Kampala on Booking.com earlier this year. After I had checked in Booking.com sent me an email asking how the check-in went. I indicated it was fine. Next morning at breakfast, the receptionist approached me to thank me for my fantastic review. I didn’t know what she was talking about until I remembered the smiley face I’d clicked on in Booking.com’s email. I was a bit concerned that they were aware of this so soon and could identify me. If I’d given them a bad check-in review who knows what would have gone in my breakfast. Poisoning is common in Uganda, I’m told!!

  • Peter K says:

    28 Jun28 June 21:30

    I booked a hotel for a week’s holiday in the Algarve via Expedia. Had the same type of email asking for a review of check-in the day after I arrived. I did not give it as was suspicious that it would be given straight to the hotel staff…seems I was right to do so!

    RE: TA. I’ve always found my trip advisor reviews have been published. Good, bad and downright ugly!

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