Summary: Expensive, Attempted Extortion, Harassment. Avoid at all costs.
I recently traveled to Porto Alegre in Brazil for the World Cup with 2 friends. In addition to hiking their rates during the Cup, the front desk told me that for a third bed, it would cost an additional R$250 per night, and that I should pay up front for the entire 3 nights on the spot! I told them that I would like to see the room because I doubted we needed another bed, since it was a Superior Double. When I got to the room, indeed it was suite-sized with 2 double beds. When we left for dinner, we told the front desk that we would not require an extra bed.
When we came back from dinner that night, the hotel staff had deactivated our hotel keys! We went to the front desk to get them reset, one of the hotel managers grabbed me by the arm and told me that I needed to pay the R$750 immediately.
Incensed, I told him that I had no intention of paying for an extra bed because it was not necessary. The Radisson staff person then told me that it was not a fee for an extra bed, but for an extra person. I asked to see this policy written down, to which he gave me no response. I told him that I had no intention of paying this fee, and needed to talk with my friends because I was confident I could find cheaper accommodations elsewhere. He told me that I would have one hour, and did so in a very threatening way.
We immediately took to the hotel computers to find alternate accommodations, but it was 11pm at that point and we had a World Cup match to see the next morning. To repack and switch hotels at that late hour would have been absurd. Feeling as if we were under the gun, we called another excellent hotel in town, Hotel Laghetto Viverone Moinhos, who assured us that they had 2 rooms available for the following evening.
When we returned to the desk to inform them that we would be leaving the hotel after this ridiculous experience of attempted extortion, they tried to bargain with us, saying that instead of R$250 they would only charge us R$60 per night! Outraged, we of course checked out in the morning and went to a hotel with lower costs and superior accommodations and amenities.
Never again will I be a Radisson customer. Worst hotel experience ever. read more
