Tip, please! Hotel booking site hits up travellers for cash
In this economy, everyone appreciates getting a tip, but should everyone be asking for one? A tweet shared by a Canadian radio host brings up an instance where tipping culture has perhaps gone too far.
Lena Shulman, a morning show host on Jack969 in Vancouver, tweeted a screenshot showing a hotel booking site asking for a tip. “I guess I should be grateful they didn’t ask for 20%,” said Shulman.
Booking a hotel? How about a tip? (I guess I should be grateful they didn't ask for 20%). pic.twitter.com/sMdswaiEUp
— Lena Shulman (@LenaRadio) June 27, 2023
Shulman told Daily Hive that she had been booking a place for her parents to stay in Vancouver on Traveluro when she noticed on the checkout page that they were asking for a tip.
“I wasn’t surprised to see it,” said Shulman. “Tipping options are popping up everywhere. However, services that have absolutely zero human interaction should garner zero tips. Who profits? The same corporation that overcharged you in the first place? Vacationing within Canada is expensive enough. This is a tone deaf move in a struggling economy,” she said.
Indeed, if you pick hotel dates on the site and go to check out, tipping options appear. The asks are quite modest – 1%, 1.6%, and 2.1%. On a $51/night hotel in Las Vegas for one night, the tip is negligible.
Screenshot from Traveluro
According to the checkout page, the tips allow the company to keep developing more ways to save money.
While a couple of dollars on a one-night stay seems like not a big ask, on a week-long stay in Downtown Vancouver, the tip they’re hitting up travellers for is much steeper, up to $74.
Screenshot from Traveluro
The response to Shulman’s tweet has been overwhelmingly against the company asking for tips.
“This is preposterous. The price of the room is stupid enough. There’s no way I’m sending a tip to, the guy who paid for the computer program,” reads one reply. “The whole tipping thing is getting out of hand,” said another.
The whole tipping thing is getting out of hand.
— Ian 🇨🇦 (@iantheCROAT) June 27, 2023
This is preposterous. The price of the room is stupid enough. There’s no way I’m sending a tip to, the guy who paid for the computer program???
— Peter Bremner (@Peter_Bremner) June 27, 2023
Well that’s a bit of an assumption on their part.
— Glenn Hampson (@GlennHampson) June 27, 2023
$350 dollars a night and they want a tip!?! No way!
— Kelly Grayson 🇨🇦 (@redhotcrew2004) June 27, 2023
Daily Hive has reached out to Traveluro to learn more about this tipping initiative and will update this story.
Would you tip your hotel booking website?
More to come…
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