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that is not cool! Did they give you a discount? you gave them a ton of business and they should be thanking you!!!
Yep. Every hotel that I looked at (and that's 7 spanning over 2 different state) charged between $15-15/per bag. Some hand them out at check in, some deliver them in the room, some are waiting in the room.
Is there any way you can just get a room list of your people and have one of the BM's go around like a girl scout and deliver them?
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We have rooms booked at a Westin and they charge $2 for guests to pick up their out of town bags at the front desk or $3 to deliver it to their room. I was kind of shocked...how hard is it for the guy at the desk to hand over the bag to a guest checking in??
That's RIDICULOUS. Because it's so hard to have good customer service? Save yourself the money, it's not that big of a deal. Geesh.
I agree, you provided them TONS of business and they should comp that. Especially if they never told you up front. Crowne Plaza's a nice hotel by the way...it ain't a motel 6 =]
Aren't OOT bags normally a "welcome" type thing? They feel a little gratuitous after the reception. Maybe you could have someone at the hotel (a mom, aunt, bridesmaid) waiting to greet the guests, with the OOT bags with them? If you can spare a person whenever most guests will be arriving, it might be nice to have a personal welcome.
I did see several hotels charging a dollar or two per bag to distribute - they would be left in the guests rooms, so I guess it made sense that there would be a service charge. We are also using a Crowne Plaza, and I don't think they're charging us anything to distribute the OOT bags.
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you still have tiome to change your hotel call around until you find a hotel that will do it for free then tell yours someone else will do it free and you will change if they can't match that level of customer service. I'll bet they can and will do it.
Mine said $3 to deliver to the room and free if they just handed them over at the desk. Needless to say we will be leaving them at the desk. The manager told me it was some labor contract thing and that why they have to charge but ehhh I dont know it seems ridiculous to me!
I hadn't looked into the delivery charge at the hotel yet.... But they did tell me there is a charge. I am bringing in over 70 rooms for the hotel.... I think they should definetly comp that service!!! Its CRAZY that they charge that much!!!
It is actually standard for a hotel to charge you to hand out anything to arriving guests. I don't know if it's because they would have to pay you back (should they go missing or get ruined or something) or if it's just yet another way for a vendor to take advantage of the W word. But I do know that almost all hotels will charge.
My hotel said they would charge us when we negotiated the block. but in the end, the day we showed up, we gave the bags to the front desk and they never said a word about the charge....it is worth trying to negotiate - say, if I get X rooms reserved, would you be willing to waive that fee? or just take your chances that they won't actually end up charging you....
my hotel defenetly does not, i'm sure you can find a way around it. Call them and don't tell them it's a wedding and say your friend is staying with them could you leave somethig at the front desk. when they say that is free tell them your bags are the same thing
i don't know if it's standard, but definitely not unusual. my hotel is charging but i think it is definitely still worth it.
Hm I hadn't even thought of this! I will definitely be negotiating this at our upcoming meeting though! That is ridiculous.
Our hotel wanted to charge us, so instead we made little notecards and left them at the desk for each guest. The card said something like "Welcome, we are so glad you are here! Please call us when you arrive so we can welcome you in person!" and we gave the baskets away that way. It was kind of a pain but at the same time it was cool to be able to say hello to each person. We gave out like 40 baskets or so.
It is more the norm for the last few years that hotels do this. My experience has been that if they hand them out at check-in, they don't charge, but if they deliver them to the room there's definitely a charge. When you work at the front desk, you have people coming on and off shift several times a day, we keep the OOT bags in the back office, and then someone has to go into the computer and flag each guest in the wedding with a note that pops up and says "Pls give bag at check-in". Delivery to rooms is usually done by one of the bellstaff which takes them away from their regular job of greeting guests & helping with luggage.
Most Boston & NYC hotels are Union for front desk & bellstaff so yup, that works into the price too.
All hotels/resorts that I talked to charged something. $2.50 is cheap compared to what I heard. Between $5-$10 a bag.
I wouldn't pass them out on the way back. If you're going to do them, you need to suck up the cost and have it done the right way. If you don't want to spend the money, then I would forgo the bag all together. Also, I see people saying to have something pass them out for you, but that won't work usually because a hotel won't give you room numbers.
This is actually something that I think is reasonable for a hotel to do, and it's not because of the word "wedding". I guess I'm just thinking that because I'm asking them to provide an extra service beyond what was originally offered, then I should pay for said service. It might be slightly ridiculous, but I don't think that the hotel is out of line for charging a nominal fee to hand them out at the desk, or a slightly higher fee to have them delivered to the rooms.
That being said, when we did ours, the Westin did it for free, but that was only because my sister works there, so I should probably keep my mouth shut:)
I actually just got our hotel to drop the OOT bag delievery fee. With 2 weeks to go they just told me about it, and I think they realized that couldn't slip it by me. It would have been $2.50.
I would be upset if we were charged, considerig how much business we're giving the hotel, with a commitment over a year in advance that those rooms will be filled. But I asked the sales manager I worked with to set up our room block (at a Westin) if there was a charge and she said there wasn't. There's nothing specified in our contract, but I'll be sure to take the e-mail from her saying there's no charge when we go to drop off our OOT bags!
I would be totally upset if a hotel tried to charge me this. This for me, is definitely a "I'll need to speak to your manager" type of situation...
We were told this by a few of the hotels, but when Mr. Lemon pointed out that our wedding had brought them X number of guests (10-30), then they graciously smiled and said nothing. He was delivering them all 2-days before and had no cash to give them anyhow... so it's a good thing it all worked out well!
our hotel wanted $5 per bag and charged us $8 per car to park. I think its pretty standard.
Our hotel (Westin) will charge $2 I think to deliver anything into a room. They also charge $8 mandatory porterage and $15 mandatory "resort fee" per guest (i.e. to use the pool). Rediculous but I am so sick of getting quotes and searching for hotels and trying to make deals I am just doing it.
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Our host hotel is also the Crowne Plaza.
In Jacksonville, it's $1 for the front desk to give the OOT bag or $2 to put it in the room. I honestly don't mind this charge. We worked out a deal where the cost of the room for our guests is almost a third of the regular price. I am pretty happy about that. I am sure our party will book at least 30 rooms.
We are probably having the rehearsal dinner there too so I may try to work that into the negotiations.
From a hotel perspective I just wanted to throw this out there. In order for the hotel to make sure that all of your guests get their bags, even if they are only being distributed at check-in, the hotel staff must put a reminder in each reservation to remind the agent checking them in. You have to do this individually. So, if your wedding has 20 rooms, and on any given weekend my hotel has 2 - 4 weddings, that's 40 - 80 bags and 40 - 80 reservations we have to add notes to.
I'm not saying that some of the hotel's $5 charges are validated, but I do know that sometimes it's very hard and time consuming to make sure that all the bags get to the right people. For any wedding group of less than 25 rooms, we will either charge the bride and groom $1 per bag, or add $1 to the rate for the hotel room. If your wedding provides us with 25 or more rooms, we waive this cost. I know this also varies depending on what type of property it is (full-service, resort, limited service, etc) Just my opinion and hotelier's perspective.
My hotel is charging $1 per OOT bag. Not sure if I'm going to use their services or not...
For those of you with wedding planners, ask them to talk to the hotels! My planner was able to knock my price done since she does a lot of work and brings a lot of business to these hotels.
That seems ridiculous. I wouldn't bother with them if I had to pay someone to deliver them.
That sounds outrageous. Is there anyway you can get a list of your guests as to who's staying where and have a friend/family member distribute the bags accordingly?
We paid $1.00 to have the bags handed out when guests arrived, and I was not expecting that because I figured, hey, we brought you business.
good luck!
The two hotels I am looking into both said they would give guests OOT bags upon check in with no charge. I think it's ridiculous that hotels would charge over $2 PER BAG/ROOM! If the hotels told me there was a charge, I would likely not do OOT bags (not that ours will be fancy as is since we will have a decent number of people coming in).
I actually like the idea of giving guests the OOT bag on the shuttle back from the reception. I feel like half of the stuff in them is either to take home (a souveneir) or something for the morning after (water, aspirin, etc.).
Just ran into this in Philly - Sofitel didn't charge, but Courtyard did - I told Courtyard that Sofitel wasn't charging me, and if they were going to, they could go ahead and cancel my block because the fee wasn't disclosed before I booked.
The fee was waived. Can you find another hotel and use that one to negotiate? Or are you running into it everywhere?
I know this seems really naive, but I had no IDEA that hotels charged for this! Why on earth would they? You bring them a ton of business and they charge YOU? I would shop around to see if there is a hotel that doesn't charge, although from the tone of this thread it seems like most do. I will definitely keep this in mind!
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I just got word from our host hotel that if I want to provide OOT bags for my guests, there will be a $2.50 charge PER BAG that I leave with them. Is this normal? Our host hotel is not by any means a "high end" hotel (it's a Crowne Plaza) but wanted to know if others are getting hit with the same type of charge. Then again, they are charging $35 for parking too.
Right now, I'm contemplating distributing our OOT bags on the shuttle bus back to the hotel after the reception. Any suggestions are welcome!
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