When you check into a hotel, you’re always asked to presents a credit card. Hotel clerks will tell you they want to make an imprint of the card. Yes, they are doing that- and much more.
The process is called blocking, and I warned about it in the first travel detective book. A few years ago this means that if your hotel room cots $250 a night and you were staying five nights, the hotel could easily block charges of about $1, 250, or five times the amount of your daily rate. Today some hotel actually will block ten times the amount of your daily rate to cover the room rate and anything else you might charge to your room. This protects the hotel and ensures that it gets paid. But if you’re using a vista, master card, or discover card when you check in cards that have preset spending limits- the hotel might very easily have maxed out your available credit by blocking. What’s worse, even if you never reach the total amount of those charges to be reversed. Most hotels do not disclose this practice, and it becomes particularly embarrassing when you try to use your credit card and discover the charge has been denied because you’re suddenly over your limit.
When all is said and done, the defining factor in choosing a hotel is service. But how do you measure service? The United States has no standardized, national systems of rating hotels, however, dozens of companies rate hotels here. The two most prominent companies are the American Automobile Association (AAA) and Mobil. both of which publish rating books. In the hotel business, a five star or five diamond rating is the equivalent of an Academy award because of the visibility that comes with this level of recognition. These rating systems are helpful to a degree, but a hotel claims a high rating, always ask who did the evaluation.