Hotel reservation agent: “I feel very guilty about lying”

I agree with they lying part, that’s just plain dishonest and immoral of the company to force employees to do. I also feel that the hotel is still a business and businesses need to make the most money they can on a transaction. The business would be shorting its shareholders if it offered the most rock bottom possible rate to everyone…that would mean the business would break even.

As a consumer I must check every avenue available, at least those that I’m comfortable with. Check with a third party booking agent like Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. Look for available discounts online for group memberships like AAA. Check the hotel’s website directly. You should get most of your legwork done that way. Maybe even call a b&m travel agent. Then call the hotel if you feel the need, they’ll offer a rate and you can then tell them you found the cheaper rate online. Maybe the hotel will even beat that online rate, who knows. An uninformed consumer is usually just ignorant and doesn’t necessarily deserve the lowest of the low price. The booking agent shouldn’t feel badly about anything but the flat out lies. A grocery store clerk shouldn’t feel badly about not having a stack of coupons to hand out at the register but should feel badly he lies if a consumer asks if an item is onsale.

i am not at all surprised by the the lying revelation. when i worked at a call center, while we were not told to outright lie–as we were a regulated company–we WERE given scripts teaching us how to manipulate the truth six ways to sunday. my husband works for a hotel chain, and even HE has to do some serious digging to find the actual employee rate available at any given hotel we stay at. it’s unfortunate that companies are more interested in protecting what limited revenue is available than extending customer service, when i feel like it goes hand in hand: if you treat me well, i’ll be back…and i’ll tell my friends.

I work for a major hotel and sometimes take in-house reservations. I sometimes recommend to the caller that they try to book online before booking directly with me. I’ve never been told to lie, thankfully. People should ask for the BAR and also the rates for applicable discounts, such as AAA. Sometimes the BAR is lower than the “discount” rate. Oh, also, many employees do not have the authority to negotiate rates, and getting mad about that won’t get you anywhere.

Hey – does she never want to work again? And retire in luxury – IF she can PROVE through her testimony or those of others still working there -then the way that they do business violated the unfair trade practice statutes in just about every state since they have fraudulent method of doing business. Since it causes financial damage to the consumer – and it is a established method of doing business – it is a clear violation of consumer protection statutes and is an unfair trade ‘practice’ since it is their method of doing business.

Furthermore – gee – RICO comes to mind as well since they are using an instrumentality of interstate commercial – the telephone – to create and perpetuate the fraud- in essence it is wire fraud – a prerequisite to RICO liability.

Both of these statutes create liability for attorneys fees and TRIPLE damages and the consumer statutes in most states provide for punitive damages. There is no way that the consumer is aware that asking for the LOWEST rate requires them to add more words to ask for the ‘very lowest’ or some other magic language – moreover- threatening to hang up and get better rates is in and of itself a potential violation -

So – TWO things -

First off, if Chris or the OP wants to get in touch with me – I’ll happily handle the lawsuit. I’m admitted in Calif, CT, the federal courts and before the US Supreme Court and can easily bring this matter – I would think this chain would settle long before it reached court simply by offering up names, dates and their own manual and language.

Second – if you call a hotel for a rate – you must be clear, after being quoted that rate you ask: Is this lowest rate in your hotel for those dates – and =- if there are lower rates, what must I do to qualify for the lower rate. Asking THAT question would force the person todisclose – weeekend specials, AAA, AARP, etc etc etc.

If you get the line of ‘lots of conventions’ my response is always, well, then why would I want to come to your hotel, you will be business and offer less than stellar service. There is always a comeback to a BS line . ..

Dishonest and unfortunate, yet not surprising.

Your best bet is to always use the web site. If you must call, the best advice she gave is to give the reservation agent a laundry list of organizations you belong to. This includes, AAA/CAA, AARP, military, government employee, your company, if you’re a senior citizen.

Another good tip that I’ve heard is that if you are part of the travel industry (i.e. work in your company’s travel department, or work for an airline/hotel/etc.) you should volunteer that information as well. Often hotels will offer better prices to their own industry.

The lying is bad…true…but one person’s acceptable hotel rate may be too expensive for someone else…it’s all what the market will bear! I don’t begrudge the hotel from trying to make money. If the buyer accepts the given rate, then that’s their rate. If another buyer balks, then they can go somewhere else, or attempt to negotiate.

My experience is similar to AZ Road Warrior’s. If I do have to make a call, it’s either because the hotel/motel doesn’t have a way to book online (such as a small or boutique facility) or if the website isn’t working properly. If the latter, I always mention the rate I’ve found and ask if there’s another rate that I may have missed. Sometimes I get a better rate, sometimes I don’t, but I don’t feel taken advantage of if I’ve done my research ahead of time.

What I find funny is the “BAR” rate option on searching a hotel/motel’s website is almost always higher than my AAA rate. I do click through the other options (senior citizen, government employee) just to see the range available.

Yikes, the more you know about hotel policies the more you don’t want to use them. My policy on my two vacation rentals on Sanibel Island is pretty consistent. No discounts until 3 weeks or less out of booking dates. And then it’s not a deep discount or a flexible one. One size fits all.

@ Christopher

You counted 103 rooms with lights on? I’ve never been that bored !!!!

I’ve worked for numerous hotels and in reservations and yes its true that a lot of hotels do quote higher prices at first. At the end of the day its all about sales and making money to those Revenue Managers out there.

We would set our online prices on third party websites around 10% lower than the prices we would quote when people call the hotel direct. HOWEVER, the prices on the third party websites would be fully prepaid, nonrefundable (most of the time). The reason for this is because we are paying commission to these websites and if someone does happen to cancel, at least we still get the revenue (to make up for paying these commissions for every sale).

The prices we offer over the phone have a 24 hr cancellation policy hence the higher “flexible” rate (for the hotels Ive worked at, may be different for others). We always offer this higher rate first then go from there. Sometimes people would say okay and book right there and then, awesome, we just got a good sale to higher our average daily rate! Other times people would ask if we had something cheaper, to which we would lower the rate “as a favour” by $10-20 to see if that would make the sale.

Sometimes we would have customers call and ask us why we were quoting higher rates than what’s available online to which we would tell them it’s because with the higher rates they have more flexibility in changing their reservation. If they want the lower rates to be matched, we also have to match the terms and conditions (fully prepaid, nonrefundable, etc).

We never want to lose a potential customer, so if we have the flexibility to lower the rate from what we originally quoted (the BAR) and change the terms + conditions, we will. A sale is a sale!

I don’t think its lying, its just how the sales process works (in multiple industries!)

Give me a break. This is not deception or fraud. These are
simply white lies involved in negotiation. What would you boneheads
do if you owned the hotel? Offer everyone who calls the special
sale rate. You’d be out of business in a hurry. Let’s reverse the
situation. What if the reservation agent asked you what is the most
you would pay. Would you tell them the truth? Of course
not.

I think that this hotel reservation agent should be looking for a job at Hotwire, Priceline, etc. (if she is willing to move to India or the PI and work for $ 400 US a month) instead of working at this upscale, full-service hotel. I am sorry to be this brutal but she doesn’t have a clue that a hotel (or any business) is in the business of making money.

This is no difference than buying a car. Does everyone pay the exact same price for the same car with the same options, etc.? No because some buyers are better negotiators; some dealers are willing to cut prices to get bonuses for moving more units; etc.

@ Spargewater: I agree.

@ BucksterSF: I agree.

One time, we were in China on a tour and it was a rainy day. When we got off the bus, there was a guy selling umbrellas for $ 1 RMB (his back was to us)…when he turn around and saw us, he changed his price to $ 1 USD. In other words, it went from 12.5 cents (this was back in 2005 when the exchange was 8 to 1) to a dollar.

I have worked for a few companies over my career where the sales reps could give a discount to the customer. The objective was to get an order without giving a discount. This is common practice among business.

On a broader view of the issue, I’d say this is, partially, a reaction for a costumer culture focused on price, price, price. People demand everything they want, but are not willing to pay for it. As it is just not feasible to have ll service costing nothing, this “gouging” schemes become the norm. We all see it within the airline industry: passengers are fixated with the fare itself, and are very elastic (in the microeconomic sense) to any price difference: they will flock to the cheapest airline in a similar route for US$ 10. Then, airlines go bankrupt, and start charging for ancillary fees etc.

I think what I find most amusing in the comments here is that people think that the car purchase model – one that is almost universally despised, one where everyone walks away feeling that he probably paid more than he should have, one where “car salesman” (used or not) is almost an epithet – is one that they’re pleased the hotel industry has chosen to emulate.

LOL, I’ve had the exact conversation Mary refers to in this interview. It was ages ago, my first trip to DC. I was looking for a reasonably priced hotel room in Georgetown. The only difference was I called the 800 number for the hotel instead of the hotel directly. We started at a rate of $180 a night (again, this was years ago) as the best rate; I refused and it dropped to $120 and was told there were tons of conventions, etc. so I would have difficulty finding a room. I declined and was offered $80 a night, I booked it.

This was one of my first trips and it taught me a valuable lesson about hotel pricing. I always decline the stated best rate at least three times now and have saved a lot of money.

The funniest part was on the flight home I was seated next to a guy that stayed at the same hotel, just a couple doors away from my room. He went on about what a great hotel it was but it should be for the price, they charged him $220 per night. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I had the same type of room for $80 a night.

Always, always, ask for the lowest rate, decline it and let the negotiations begin!

Two notes:
I found a low rate for a private (not chain) hotel in New York on a hotel booking site. I figured I’d call the hotel and save them the commission they had to pay that reduced that low rate to even less income for them. The reservation clerk AND the manager denied me that rate. Quoted a higher rate. Even when I said, “But, I can get it for less than that on another site,” they said I should do that, then. No, I haven’t checked to see if the hotel is still in business.

Years ago I found a family rate at a hotel where I wanted to stay but was denied the rate when I said we only had two people in the party instead of three or four. I called back a few days later and said we had four people in the room and that was fine. When we checked in, they asked us about the children and we said they weren’t going to be there.

An eye opener, more than enough reason to lie to them!

Online hotel reservation
software is becoming a very popular method for booking hotel rooms. Travelers
can book rooms from home by using online security to protect their privacy and
financial information and by using several online travel agents to compare
prices and facilities at different hotels.

From my hotel experience….

You can always get a better rate from the agent on the phone than you can online.

However – Rates like to change with occupancy, and some companies put average rates for a particular room class for some period of time, or will pick a low rate date by default.

However, when you put your actual reservation dates in, you will see the actual rate you can book at.

This leads to a giant misunderstanding of the rate. Typically when we say we cannot match that rate online, were telling the truth. (However, at hotels where the FD makes the reservations, sometimes we just don’t want you to stay with us we can already tell you will be a headache.

Mike’s rule of thumb – “Those that pay really low rates will always complain”

I work at a Front Desk, I make reservations at this hotel as well.

The lowest rate means -> The lowest rate you qualify for with the given information we have.

Well, we don’t have any additional information- and therefore it is the lowest rate you qualify for.

Special sales, etc have a restriction that the guest must mention it (same with bereavement, you can say, you have a funeral etc, your mother died, etc… you still got rack – however if you don’t ask for the bereavement rate, your not going to get it unless your really nice… and even then… good luck. The restriction for me at least is the guest must say “Bereavement”, however in this circumstance if they cannot remember the bereavement word, and try to use it without giving me the whole life story of whom died – I’ll honor it.

On a positive note – I do tend to upgrade these guest that are there for such a tragic event or give free breakfast because they are paying a crazy high rate compared to what they are eligible for.

I am a fan of the Florida booking agents. I even consider hiring one for my honeymoon. Thanks for sharing this information.