Hotel being sued over service fees!
Posted by Kristi Casey Sanders on December 16, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Who hasn’t complained about the increase in service fees this year? Some hotels are up to 24 percent. But a class-action lawsuit in Hawaii may change all that. Check out this story in the Honolulu Advertiser.
According to the article, there is a class-action lawsuit against the Kahala Hotel. Hawaii’s law states that if service fees don’t go to completely to the staff, then it must be clearly stated how the fees are distributed. A local man alleges that the Kahala Hotel charged him $4,800 in service fees that didn’t all go to the employees, and that the hotel did not disclose that they were keeping a portion of the fee for themselves.
How many times have you asked a hotel to tell you what the service fee was covering and been unsatisfied by the response? I know some planners who have been told that the property doesn’t need to disclose that information. Hotels should probably start being more transparent about it. In this case, the plaintiffs are eligible to receive up to 3x what they were charged in refunds if the ruling is in their favor.
