Just found this great article on Hidden Hotel Fees and How to Avoid Them and thought I'd share it with you.

The article originated in Kiplinger, so it should be pretty reliable.

I didn't know about hotel room fridges having sensors.

And people tip housekeeping staff??? No way. Sorry. They ARE paid on a regulary salary to make the bed, vaccum, etc. I've never heard of this at all. And we travel enough.

Hi Orchid,

I know I never tip the maid service at any hotel I stay in. But I am aware that some people do. And I have often tipped the bellman, if he has helped me haul in a lot of luggage.

But with regard to maid, I know some maids who even leave a little envelope in the room for the tip to go in...

Your comment interested me, so I checked my good friend Google. Here's on of the many articles I found on the subject.

Maybe it's an age-related thing: Maybe people older than us are used to tipping the hotel maids... But I did notice that the article I linked to said these tipping guides were for the US...

We travel a lot, and admit to rarely tipping the maids in North America. We probably should, but usually just forget because we check out at the front desk and then leave. But we do tip everybody in Cuba, and in other more impoverished areas, because we know that almost every working person in those poorer countries supports their entire extended family on that meager salary. But we don't just tip with money...we often tip with both money and goods that we know aren't available or affordable.

In all of our travels, we've rarely ever been charged for wi-fi here in North America...it was common to be charged extra in Europe for WI-fi in the room, but many hotels now have computer centers where the Internet is either free or fairly cheap; Internet access is still very expensive in Cuba.

The extra fee that we detest the most is the parking fee. We always check before booking now to make sure parking is included. If not, we choose another hotel.

Just a side note...we recently traveled through southern Ontario, staying in the Howard Johnson en route. While the local calls were free, the phone system was apparently not able to make calls to cell phones. The friend we were visiting only had a cell phone, so it was terribly inconvenient. I had to download Skype on my laptop (which took me about two frustrating hours over a free but VERY SLOW Internet connection) and then go buy a headset in order to be able to make phone calls from the hotel to this friend. Very frustrating. Although I like having Skype on my laptop now.

Fascinating, Eagle Heart. I've never experienced a phone system where one could not place calls to cell phones. And more and more people are switching to ONLY having a cell....