Hotels are the most practised part of this industry. A five-star front desk checks in couples who arrived separately, guests using a company card, and people who would rather not be announced, several times a night, without a flicker. They are very good at it.
What they cannot do is guess. Almost every uncomfortable moment we hear about traces back to a reservation that left a decision to the desk, and the desk resolved it in the most standard way available, out loud, in a lobby.
Decide the room count first
This is the decision everything else follows from, and it is worth being direct about. Bookings through us cover a companion’s time and social company. Where everybody sleeps is a matter of practicality rather than an implication, and the practical answer is usually two rooms.
Two rooms means both people have somewhere to change, somewhere to leave a bag, and somewhere to go at the end of the night without a conversation about it. On a multi-day trip it is the single thing that makes the arrangement comfortable rather than negotiated.
If a suite with a separate sitting room suits the trip better, that works too, and it is worth saying which arrangement you have booked when you book it. A companion who knows the sleeping arrangement before they pack is a companion who arrives relaxed.
Names on the reservation
Put the correct name on each room. It sounds trivial. It is the most common cause of a desk conversation, because a mismatch between the card, the passport and the reservation has to be resolved before a key is issued, and it gets resolved by asking questions.
- Book each room in the name of the person staying in it, and give us both names at the time of booking
- If one card is paying for both rooms, say so in advance so the desk sets up billing before you arrive rather than while you stand there
- Ask for the second room to be billed to the first as a room charge only, which keeps incidentals separate and off one folio
- Give the hotel the arrival times separately if you are arriving separately, so neither of you is waiting in a lobby for the other to be checked in
That last one costs nothing and prevents the specific scene everyone wants to avoid, which is one person sitting in a lobby armchair for twenty minutes looking like they are waiting for someone.
The folio
A folio is the itemised bill, and it records everything: room service for two, the second key card, the spa booking, the bar tab, the time each charge was posted. It is printed at checkout and, in most chains, emailed automatically to the address on the reservation.
If that address is a work address, the folio arrives in a work inbox and possibly in an expenses system. Say at check-in that you would like the folio emailed to a specific address and printed rather than posted under the door. Both requests are completely routine and neither requires a reason.
Nothing about a hotel stay is as widely circulated as the folio, and nobody reads it until it is somewhere they did not want it.
What to say at check-in
Three requests, said plainly, at the desk. None of them raises an eyebrow anywhere.
First: "Please do not confirm my stay to anyone who calls or asks at the desk." Hotels have a standard procedure for this and it is switched on with one keystroke. It means the desk will neither confirm nor deny that you are a guest.
Second: "Could you email the folio to this address and not print anything to the room." Written on the back of a card is easiest.
Third, if you want it: "We would rather not be walked up." A porter escort is a courtesy, and declining it is equally normal.
The two hours nobody books
Two gaps cause more trouble than the stay itself. The first is arriving at eleven in the morning when check-in is at three. The second is a flight at nine in the evening on a day when checkout was at noon.
Both are solved at the point of booking rather than on the day. Ask for early check-in when you reserve and again on the morning of arrival. Hotels grant it when they can and the answer depends entirely on last night’s occupancy, so asking twice genuinely improves the odds.
Late checkout works the same way, and in most houses a four o’clock departure is available for the asking. Where it is not, ask about a day room instead. It costs a fraction of a night, it means somewhere to change and shower before a dinner, and it removes the version of the evening where somebody gets ready in an airport lounge.
On a trip with a companion this matters twice over, because a companion whose room has been given up at noon has nowhere to be for six hours. Book the second room for the extra half day. It is the cheapest kindness available on a travel booking.
Airport transfers and the sign
Hotel cars are excellent and the driver will be holding a card with a name on it, in an arrivals hall, in front of several hundred people. Ask for the card to carry the booking reference rather than the name. Every hotel car desk we have ever asked has done it without a question.
The same applies to a companion arriving on a different flight. A reference on a card, and a message to both phones with the driver’s name and the meeting point, replaces a lot of standing about.
What we handle
For travel bookings we put the arrangement in writing before anyone leaves home: how many rooms, whose name is on which, who is billed for what, and what the desk has been asked to do. It goes to the client and the relevant part goes to the companion.
It is an unromantic document. It is also the reason nobody spends the first four minutes of a trip working something out at a marble counter.
If you would rather we made the hotel booking outright, we will, in whichever name you specify and with all of the above already arranged. It is one of the few parts of a trip where handing it over genuinely saves you something, because we have made the same request to the same desks enough times to know how each of them prefers to be asked.
