Not sure how to title this thread, but here’s the story.
A friend is on his way out of the country and was checking out some hotel options for the last few days.
He got a colleague to call up about prices to avoid getting shafted right off the bat.
Paraphrased conversations below -
Hotel 1:
“Yes the rate is 5000+ nt, but don’t worry there is a discount of 35%”
“Ok, great. My friend is a foreigner”
“Oh, well in that case, the discount is only 20%”
“Really, why is that?”
“Well, there are extra safety factors to consider when a foreigner wants to stay here, so the price is higher”
Hotel 2:
“Yes we have rooms available for xxxx, would you like to book?”
“Well actually, I am calling for my friend who is a foreigner, so let me check”
“A foreigner eh? Hmm, I am not sure we are even allowed to let foreigners stay here…”
Hello. It’s 2007, get with it Taiwan. Just imagine the uproar in my country if we had an “asian surcharge” on hotel bookings.
That’s pretty ridiculus. Though I’m curious, why did your friend’s colleague need to specifically mention that your friend was a foreigner? Why not just say “I’m calling to reserve a room for my friend”, or something similar? I guess it was better to find out before hand that the rate would be different for a foreigner, instead of making a reservation and finding out when he showed up at the hotel. Then again, if he had a reservation at a specific quoted rate, could they have changed it when he showed up at the hotel and they saw that he was a foreigner?
I’m sure this has been discussed before, but I’m buggered if I can remember where.
Anyway, yeah, it sucks. It would be cool to phone a lot of these places up and record the conversations. Of course it would have to be someone with a local accent doing the calling. Then expose the feckers.
Disgusting little habit here on “NARUWAN” Island thats for certain.
Just wondering if they have a floating rate charge for different “foreigner” devils?
Germans @ + 30%
Canadians @ + 15 %
USA @ + 25 %
Irish @ + 40 %
Ozzies @ + 20 % damage deposit to the WC
Kiwis @ 0 - they never cause any problems
EU’s @ a floating rate tied to the Euro or something like that
[quote=“tommy525”]is this taiwan we are talking about or china? iv never heard of such a thing in taiwan.[/quote]SOP since at least the late '80’s when I first began coming to the island on business.
Still the same today - I make a reservation at 1 price, my wife calls back and gets quoted at least 30% lower as a local. Same hotels, same rooms, same everything.
Disgustingly discriminatory.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”][quote=“tommy525”]is this taiwan we are talking about or china? iv never heard of such a thing in taiwan.[/quote]SOP since at least the late '80’s when I first began coming to the island on business.
Still the same today - I make a reservation at 1 price, my wife calls back and gets quoted at least 30% lower as a local. Same hotels, same rooms, same everything.
Disgustingly discriminatory.[/quote]
China started doing this way back when and when all the taiwanese visited china, they thought OHHH A GOLD MINE im sure. vERY unfair and uncivilized !!
Its called Arbitrage, and surely with a bit of skill it can be whittled down. Unless of course they don’t want any business? Afterall, hotels are pretty much a commodity business.
I really don’t see how its different to any other kind of business in Taiwan, whether its selling mobile phones on street to anything. The assumption is that foreigners have more money and are generally stupid, therefore rip them off. Japanese get ripped off on the Gold Coast too. Women get ripped off at the mechanics.
Does Taiwan actually have any laws regarding this?
No, it’s not. Arbitrage is when you buy something where it’s cheap and sell it where it’s expensive. This is price discrimination.
Even if you were to make a law, it would be difficult if impossible to enforce it. Most hotels publish some ridiculously high list price and they give different customers different discounts depending on what they think their willingness to pay is. All anyone will ever see is the list price.
And this goes on plenty in the West. Take an airplane from NY to Chicago and you will most certainly pay a different price than everyone else on the plane. You’ll get a different offer at a used car dealership if you’re a woman wearing pearls rather than a man in greasy work clothes. As to ripping off foreigners, I’m sure there are plenty of landlords and mechanics and such who gladly rip off exchange students and international tourists.
The govt subsidizes Taiwanese hotel guests only, to encourage Taiwanese people to go to hotels. It’s not that the furriners are being charged more, but that the locals are getting a subsidized discount.
Went to the Ritz Landis (ya do) in Taipei once. Me and Mrs Hill were to stay together on the Saturday night, then she went back to the chung and I was to stay an extra night. At the desk they told us it was (approx) 5 grand for the first night (2 people, double room) and then 7 grand for me to stay the next night in the same room. MrsHill went into crazy local speak and got the room for the same price for both nights.
She puked in the lobby there once, but thats another story.
I remember living in florida the state residents got discounted prices for almost everything. disney and other parks - discounted tickets, Bars-no covers, hotels - cheaper rooms, etc. made me want to switch my d/l over in a hurry.
[quote=“TomHill”]
Went to the Ritz Landis (ya do) in Taipei once. Me and Mrs Hill were to stay together on the Saturday night, then she went back to the chung and I was to stay an extra night. At the desk they told us it was (approx) 5 grand for the first night (2 people, double room) and then 7 grand for me to stay the next night in the same room. MrsHill went into crazy local speak and got the room for the same price for both nights.
She puked in the lobby there once, but thats another story.[/quote]
I more and more love Mrs. Hill.
No, it’s not. Arbitrage is when you buy something where it’s cheap and sell it where it’s expensive. This is price discrimination.[/quote]
Price discrimination is OK. Racial price discrimination is not.[/quote]
It’s not racial price discrimination, it’s discrimination based on nationality.[/quote]
If that’s really how it works, it would be OK with me. Nothing wrong with some incentives to motivate more foreigners to become Taiwanese.
Here’s my story: When booking our flights to Taiwan, my GF was told by the Taiwanese travel agent based in Germany that there would be an additional “Chinese New Year fee” of 20€ for me. This fee would allegedly be imposed by China Airlines if I didn’t fly together with her and wasn’t a family member. Maybe the reasoning was that “foreigners” don’t have to go to Taiwan during CNY? I don’t know. However, my GF doesn’t have a Taiwanese passport anymore and wasn’t asked to pay this fee (in the end, I didn’t pay it either). What’s the explanation here? Government subsidies for former Taiwanese flying “home” during CNY?
