Okay. I have a blog so I can rant. I’ve stayed at many hotels in my lifetime. I make my reservation for the stay I plan to have. I show up, check in and go to my room. At the end of my stay I check out and receive my bill. I understand that I’ll be charged a fee or even a night’s stay if I don’t show up or cancel at the last minute. It’s the wonderful relationship I have with hotels. It works.
I tried something new on my last stay. I booked my reservation using the booking service on TripAdvisor. I was surprised to find out they charged the full stay on my card before I checked in! I know people pay in advance for cruises and tours. I usually don’t pay in advance for a hotel. What if I check out early? I’ve been charged for nights I might not use.
Here’s my biggest concern with this. Go watch Hotel Impossible. There are a lot of poorly managed hotels out there. If I arrive and the place is dirty, smelly, have critters or is in poor repair … I’m history! I’ll find somewhere else to stay. I’ll pay the price of a night stay if I need to. I don’t want to have to fight to get the cost of 2 or 3 day’s back when I didn’t stay 1 day.
I know this maybe petty for some. You might even call me naive for not knowing that booking sites do this. I definitely will view this as a lesson learned.
Don’t get me wrong. I love TripAdvisor for the information. I’ll just book future reservations somewhere else.
Thank you for reading the Maryland Travel Stories Blog!
Maryland Travel Stories 
Booking via Tripadvisor is not the perfect way indeed. There are better ways to save some money while booking 🙂
LikeLike