How To Score A Free Night In A Hotel When You’ve Been Inconvenienced

Hotel living is sweet, especially if you leave room in your luggage for all the mini-shampoos and towels that come with it. Too bad that taking a break from your apartment for a night is so expensive you’d be better off just buying expensive shampoos and towels. That is, unless you can learn to scam your way into a free home away from home in a way that’s totally legal.

A Redditor named youlovethisish (I do) on subreddit /SocialEngineering asked about free hotel rooms after finding wasps squatting in the one they’d already paid for:

Called the front desk, and while he was attempting to reassure me that there shouldn’t be more, I told him I see it fit to move rooms. He said he was booked out, so I suggested sister hotels. Looks like there aren’t any in the area, so I ended up checking out and heading to a different, unassociated hotel.

The OP wanted to know if there’s something they could still do to get a few days in a hotel comped. Though their money for the bug pad was returned, the cost of finding a new, unrelated place was more than they bargained for. The main response was “complain, complain, complain.”

JyveAFK wrote that the hotel technically had no further legal obligation, so if you want more justice, you gotta squeeze a little harder:

Legally, they have already done the right thing, they have ‘made you whole’. Risk is going to look like you’re pushing it.

What /might/ work is getting in touch with someone higher up in the chain, letting them know but in a “how can we stop this happening again? I like your hotel, I’m sure this is a one off, but is there a better way to handle it in future, as though I had the hotel charges cleared as I didn’t stay, there was still some faffing with having to move”. And leave it there. If they offer a night or 2, great, if they “thanks for your input, we’ll take it on board” then that will be it. Might even be /some/ points they give you as that’s easy for them. But be wary of the tone you use, the second you demand, they will push back as they have done what they needed to.

The politeness of the complaining is stressed. There are lots of managers or people hirer up in the chain who might be willing to help a reasonable customer — someone who stands out from all the unreasonable people hogging the phone lines on a daily basis. They’re also trying to give the hotel a good reputation for customer service (if they know how to do their jobs) and a happy customer is a returning customer.

But if being nice doesn’t work, you can always escalate. DaveManchester suggested the OP go public, because once things are on social media, companies tend to respond faster:

Post on social media. Be nice to customer service.

User seanfish even wrote a little script:

Twitter:

I’m really disappointed at the service I received from @hotelchain in #city yesterday.

Another aspect of the free hotel room that people may be unaware of is the obligation of airline flights to pay for your room (and usually food as well) if there are extended flight delays. This varies pretty wildly from place to place, but in an old thread from /UnitedKingdom, a Ryanair passenger was delighted to discover that they were due a little rest and relaxation curtesy of the company. Worth looking into when you’re trying to sleep in an airport chair.

You can also read this very creepy thread about how one might break into a hotel room for nefarious purposes by approaching the desk, but maybe save it for when you’re abroad on Halloween and just dying to hose a seance on the cheap.