Five Tips for Avoiding an Unhappy Hotel Experience.
In the travel section of today’s L.A. Times, a reader complains that nearby construction ruined their stay at a $1,000-a-night Paris hotel. Hotel management exacerbated the problem by blowing them off.
L.A. being the leading litigious light that it is, The Times suggested a trip to small claims court. But there are several things you can do to ensure that when someone gets the short end of the hotel stick, it won’t be you.
Here are five tips for stacking the deck in your favor:
1) Never book the least expensive room. “Standard Room” is a hospitality industry euphemism for “sub-standard room that we have to charge less for because it’s crappy in one way or another.”
2) When all things are equal, book directly with the hotel. Booking through Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline, etc. gives the hotel a convenient scapegoat if things go wrong.
3) Travel off-season. If you don’t like your room, odds are that you’ll be able to move to a better one.
4) Never trust a single source of information. Use guidebooks to make a short list, then read reviews on Tripadvisor, Lonely Planet’s Bluelist, etc. Be especially skeptical of the hotel web 
site.
5) Dress and act like you belong. When you read the “I’ve never been treated so rudely in my whole life” reviews on Tripadvisor, it’s usually apparent that the writer was a fish out of water who expected Jakarta to be just like Jacksonville.
