The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (5 page)

Finally, the doors opened and I peered out into the lobby, trying my best to keep the rest of my body out of sight. All was calm and still, thank God; the clock behind the reception desk said 4:25 a.m. The only witness to my humiliation would be a solitary night porter sitting behind the reception desk, reading a magazine.

“¡
Ay Dios m’ıo
!” And a tiny Hispanic cleaner, mopping the floor right next to the elevator. I hadn’t noticed her.

“
Lo siento
,” I said. My two words of Spanish.

“Don’t worry, Maria, I’ll go.” said the night porter, looking up boredly from his magazine. It was an interesting choice of words, “I’ll go,” as if this kind of thing—naked men walking out of the elevators at four in the morning—happened at the Pod every night.

He picked up a master key from behind the desk and ambled towards the elevator. Even though I was still shit-faced drunk, the next thirty seconds—which took the form of about three and a half years—were the most embarrassing of my life. I stood at one side of the elevator, still naked, ass pressed against the wall, genitals still cupped in my hands, while the tall night porter—I think he was Russian—stood as far on the other side as possible.

“Sorry about this,” I said.

He didn’t say a word.

A few hours later—11 a.m.—I woke up in my hotel bed and, for a few blissful minutes, I completely forgot about my naked elevator adventure.

I don’t normally get headaches with hangovers, but this morning was different. My skull felt like it was full of burning sand—burning sand that was leaking down my throat. Stupid sambuca. I stood up and walked to the bathroom.

Must drink water. Lots of water.

I turned on the tap above the sink and put my face in the bowl, letting the stream of water run over the back of my head and down the sides of my face. Then I tilted my head upwards and started lapping from the tap. Forget Evian or Perrier: there is no more delicious water than hangover water.

After gulping down about half my body weight of the stuff, I shut off the tap and stood backup, gripping the sides of the sink for support, water dripping from my hair down the rest of my body. That’s when I caught a glimpse of my naked self in the mirror. And that’s when the first flashback came.

“Oh fuuuuucccccckkkkkk.”

There was no other mature course of action; I had to get out of there. There was simply no way I could face another thirty nights in the same hotel, with the same Russian night manager and the same small Hispanic cleaner. I was still drunk and I already felt sick with embarrassment. God knows how I’d feel when I sobered up.

A significant advantage of hotel stays over apartment rental contracts is that they’re easy to renegotiate or cancel. Most hotels insist that you give twenty-four—or occasionally forty-eight—hours’ notice if you decide to leave early.

If you can’t give notice—say, because you hadn’t planned on waking up naked in a corridor—then you’re still free to leave early but they’ll usually charge you for the notice period. But that’s all they’ll make you pay.

Some will try to insist on a small “early check-out” penalty but the trick to getting rid of those is to be extremely apologetic, and to
make it clear that you’re looking forward to coming back to the hotel in future. The only way you can find yourself trapped—financially at least—is if you’ve paid for the room up front—which some online booking sites force you to do to get their best rates.

Paying up front can actually be a great idea if you’re only staying for a couple of days and you’re paying with a debit card. When a hotel pre-authorizes your debit card for incidentals at check-in, the amount is immediately taken (or “held”) from your checking account. For short stays, the hold might be more than the total cost of the room, and it can take as long as a week for it to be released and your money returned.

By paying for the room in advance you can legitimately refuse to hand over your card for pre-authorization at check-in as long as you’re not planning to raid the minibar. The worst they can do is ask for a cash deposit, which they’ll hand you back on departure.

In most other cases, though, paying up front is a terrible idea. You just never know when you’ll need to escape. I finally found my jeans thrown on a shelf—
interesting
—along with one of my shoes. The second shoe, it turned out, was hiding in the shower, along with my shirt and coat. I took some comfort from this as, firstly, it meant I’d obviously arrived back at the hotel fully clothed, and, secondly, because I was only traveling with one pair of shoes.

I quickly pulled on the jeans and shoes—my socks were apparently lost forever—and swapped the shirt for a clean one from my suitcase. I hadn’t even unpacked. There was also no way I was going to go to reception to check out: the night porter would certainly have told the morning shift about the naked man from room 625.

Instead, I grabbed my suitcase, took the elevator to the lobby—another juddering flashback—and, just before the doors opened, began talking into my cell phone as if I was in the middle of a very important call. No one stops you when you’re on the phone.
I walked straight through the lobby, past the reception desk and out onto the street, inhaling the exhaust fumes and food smells of freedom. I didn’t stop walking until I was three blocks from the hotel, where I found another Irish pub, this one with a wooden board outside boasting free Wi-Fi Internet access. I stood in the doorway for a moment and looked around—trying to remember if it was the same bar I’d been in the night before. No plastic leprechaun—good. I ordered half a beer—hair of the dog, that’s all—and found a table in the corner.

Opening my laptop I started to write an email …

That last part was a lie, obviously—I could never set foot in the place
again—but by acting like a potential future guest I knew there was less chance they’d try to charge me for the canceled nights.

Sure enough, when I checked my online bank statement a few weeks later, I found they hadn’t even charged me for the extra twenty-four hours.

The email having been sent, all I had to do was find a new hotel, something that the Internet has made ridiculously easy, but also annoyingly absorbing.

It’s far too easy to spend hours comparing features and reviews and rates, when in fact the only questions that need to be answered are: Are the rooms nice? Is it near to where I need to be? Does it have decent Internet access, not just in the public areas but in the actual rooms? Are the online reviews from other guests favorable, particularly when it comes to the service? Some people like a gym too.
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I took another drag from my beer to steady my hand for the task ahead. I could feel my hangover catching up with me—the last of the previous night’s alcohol was leaving my system and I knew I’d either have to order a second beer or surrender to the worsening sickness.

Just one more.

I fired up
TripAdvisor.com
—my go-to hotel review site, and ran a quick search for the highest rated hotels in Manhattan. I never look at the mid-range chain hotels—the four-star Marriotts, the Hiltons, the Sheratons—they’re usually very nice, but they’re also exactly the same in every city on earth.

Since my parents moved from managing chain hotels to owning an independent one, my loyalties have moved the same way. I’ve got as
tired of cookie-cutter experiences as they have.
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Unless I already have a favorite hotel in a city, or a personal recommendation from someone I trust, TripAdvisor is indispensable.

The site lists about half a million hotels, with more than thirty million reviews written by actual guests. Hotel sites generally use their own arbitrary ratings systems rather than anything official or internationally recognized, but anything with an average rating of less than four out of five on TripAdvisor is likely to be a dump in any language.

After the first batch of results came up, it was time to filter them based on price. TripAdvisor doesn’t sell rooms itself; it just links to the major price-comparison sites. Some people swear by sites like Priceline that promise deep discounts on upscale hotels, as long as you don’t mind them picking the hotel for you. It’s only after you’ve confirmed the room—and agreed to pay for it—that you actually find out where you’re staying.

That idea has never appealed to me: not only are there too many unknowns but you have to pay up front. I clicked on a few links. With my budget of $100 a night, I ignored anywhere that was advertising a rate less than $75. With this hangover, I deserved better than a budget hotel in a shitty part of town. Had I been staying less than a couple of weeks I would also have ignored anywhere over $150 a night—but I still had twenty-seven days left in New York so I at least had a shot at some deep discounting.

I eventually settled on a shortlist of three likely places—a process that would normally take me about ten minutes, but with my monstrous hangover took me the best part of forty-five. And one and a half beers. Then it was time to make some calls.

When my friends ask me for advice on scoring cheap hotel rooms,
I always tell them that, once they have their shortlist, the first thing to do is call the hotel’s reservations department. I coach them to explain that a friend has recommended the hotel as the best place in town but that they’re traveling on a budget and were wondering if anything can be done with the rate advertised online?

Hotel booking sites act much like travel agents—with hotels paying anything up to 15 percent commission on any booking you make through them. If they can get you to book directly then they can afford to knock almost all of that commission off the price of the room and still come out ahead.

The phone operators in big chain hotels don’t usually have the leeway to make those decisions, but most independent places do. And they gladly will; people who book direct rather than through agencies are much more likely to become repeat guests. The trick is to emphasize that you don’t mind a bad room. Every hotel has rooms that are tough to sell: rooms that are smaller than the others, rooms with just a shower and no bath, rooms right at the top of the building, only accessible by stairs. These are the ones that usually end up on the anonymous hotel sites like Priceline, and these are the rooms that—particularly in independent hotels—are easiest to get discounts on.

Another bonus is that, in almost every case, the person taking your booking is not going to be the person you see at check-in. If the hotel is nice and the price is right, it makes sense to take whatever room you’re offered and then, on check-in, if you’re not happy with the room just stroll down to reception and complain. Politely.

Pick something that you couldn’t have known when you booked. The room looks out over the road and you’re a light sleeper. It only has a shower and you’re sure that on their website a bath was mentioned.
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If one of the fixtures in the room—the shower, the sink, the bed—is broken, you’re golden.

“Is there any chance of getting a different room? Sorry to be difficult …”

Nine times out of ten they’ll upgrade you on the spot, or at least give you a nicer room in the same class. It’s something every receptionist is empowered to do, no one has ever got fired for, and is far less hassle for them than arguing with you. And if you’re still not happy, you can always check out the next morning and go somewhere else.

That’s the advice I give to my friends, but this is as good a time as any to admit that it isn’t the approach I always take. Sometimes I have my heart set on a particular hotel but the reservations department won’t budge on price; maybe there’s a big conference in town and everywhere else is full; maybe I’m just unlucky. It happens. In those cases, I have an absolutely foolproof plan B. And by foolproof, I mean it has never, ever, failed.

I play the press card.

Most upscale hotels employ a person whose sole job is to encourage journalists to say nice things about them. In large hotel chains, this person probably works in-house and is called Director of Marketing. For smaller chains and independents, the job is usually outsourced to a PR agency. As an occasionally published writer, and one who feels no shame in exploiting the fact for fun and profit, it usually just takes a quick email to the press office to get results …

“Media rate”: those are the key words. Every hotel has one and, depending on how prestigious your publication or how convincing your email, the discount can range anywhere from 10 percent off the rack rate up to 100 percent.

Even hotels that claim they don’t discount for media, do. The Lanesborough says it doesn’t have a media rate—why would it? It’s the most prestigious hotel in London—and yet it certainly does. In December 2009 it was £350 for a £1000 room.
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