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Do not believe for one moment prepaid hotel bookings put a single cent into the hotel staff's tip box

The most common and nastiest trick used by the "hospitality" industry is to claim prepaid accommodation includes service charges. Prepaid hotel rooms include all mandatory taxes and hotel / agent processing fees; the later which is deliberately misdescribed as "service charges" in order to make holiday makers believe they have put some extra money into the pockets of the staff of the hotel they are staying at when they have not. The correct term for prepaid accommodation is the "Net / Nett Rate" with no further mandatory charges. The correct meaning of "Service Charges" is money paid to the hotel to distribute equally to its staff. The fact reservation sites use this blatant falsehood we believe is fraud.

Although we link to a number of hotel room booking agents (we earn a commission from them if you book after visting their site via one of our links) who may or may not follow this horrible yet widespread practice, we have no control over them / their site. If they say their rates include service charges, they are simply doing what everyone else does.

Please do not kid yourself, wherever you book, if you prepay none of your money goes as "tips" / service charge to the hotel staff. This is part of the reason prepaid hotel rooms are cheaper in many cases. Please, if you prepay your hotel room, put some of the savings aside for the hotel staff if they do a good job for you.

Other related pages:

Why prepaid hotel rooms are cheaper
How to make sure the hotel staff get their tips / service charges
Screw Indonesia

Thank you

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