to still book our DS (16) as a 15 year old at a Premier Inn?

[VioletOrange]

I’m probably going to get a flaming for this but here goes.

We only have DS, he can’t stay in a PI by himself until he’s 18. If we booked him in as an adult, as he’s classed as one now he’s 16, we’d have to pay for another room. So for now, while we can still just about get away with it, we book him in as a child stating he’s 15.

In one PI where we’ve stayed many times over the years, a couple of the regular staff are aware but they’re ok with this. He doesn’t get up for breakfast so doesn’t benefit from the ‘kids eat free’ deal.

AIBU to carry on doing this for as long as we can get away with it? Not that he’ll likely still want to come away with us in the next few years.

My personal opinion is that on the one hand they class 18+ as adults but want to charge a 16 year old adult prices.

Absolutely. Some of the vile derogatory language used on this thread is far worse than the OP’s actioned and said far more about the standards of those preaching integrity.

It's no odds to the hotel if a 16 year old shares a room with their parents. They make the same money from the room. The alternative is that the family don't book a hotel room at all as it's too expensive to pay for two rooms. These types of places are rarely full in my experience, so better to fill one room than none. Yes it's technically dishonest but there are more important things to be honest about.

So you differentiate between "dishonest" and "technically dishonest." Pray tell, in what other ways? Grabbing a few coins from the collection plate at church OK? Stealing a towel or two from the money-grubbing profiteering hotel? Slipping a few extra groceries into you bag at the self-service till?

Still doing it with our 17 year old, soon to be 18. They get a sofa bed, not a proper bed - as I see it, that's the pay off... He's normally just crashing there late at night and heading off early the next morning, so doesn't actually partake in the room experience for more than about eight hours. We, on the other hand, hang around waiting to pick him up the next day for quite a large part of it, so usually have two breakfasts, coffee and snacks etc, maybe lunch in the bar... PI get our custom for twenty-four hours. I don't feel bad that we don't pay another £56 upwards just, literally, for a bed.

@Onelifeonly The alternative is that the family don't book a hotel room at all as it's too expensive to pay for two rooms.
Yes - this a much more succinct way of saying what I just rambled on about!

Totally!

“Of course it isn’t playing to the rules, it’s cheating the system, a system whereas I see it is up for bending those rules, otherwise they would put measures in place where those rules can’t be broken. I’m ticking the 2 x adults 1 x child box on a PI booking form”
So why the OP? To find likeminded people to justify your actions?

And I’m glad to see MNHQ have removed the personal attacks on @ZeldaWillTellYourFortune and Nazi references.

How you and PPs say that it’s ‘cheating the system’, ‘technically theft’, ‘it’s ok as its a big company, but I wouldn’t do it to a smaller one’ blah blah but can’t seem to comprehend that eating something you haven’t paid for is stealing is simply bizarre.

As @TheCountessofFitzdotterel suggests, you must be all be right down the dishonest spectrum if you can’t see why it is wrong.

I don’t like it or agree with the PI policy, but I would never dream of defrauding and stealing from them just because I felt that way. I would simply stay elsewhere rather than make a conscious decision to be dishonest.

Well this one seems to have followed a very similar pattern 🤣

As I posted in my original OP, my bugbear is the fact that the law states DS is still a child. He can’t stay in a PI without us until he’s 18, so they are treating him as a child, so why, if he’s then accompanied by his parents, is he suddenly classed as an adult?

It’s ok to post about this. There are no rules on AIBU and yes, it’s been eye opening to ask others what they in turn think about it and what they would do, the majority of which do, or would do, exactly the same as I.

It’s also been eye opening about differing views on this.

Btw, Zelda wasn’t personally attacked on that post, it was down to the Nazi reference, I think. Zelda has been pretty vocal herself, calling pp, Scabs and grafting mingers, so is that ok? Not nice. If you want a post to make impact, throwing insults isn’t the way to go about it.

😆 it’s been eventful to say the least!

Wrong by all accounts!

I can give one example of how they rip people off. We must have booked Premier Inn well over 50 times because of my son’s badminton tournaments and other holidays, during which time average prices have risen from £39 to well over £100. That’s not the rip off - just background. For the first time ever my wife put in a claim on the ‘good night’s guarantee’ after a noisy lift adjacent to our room prevented her from sleeping at all. Despite numerous phone calls and emails out claim was completely neglected. We didn’t even get the courtesy of a refusal. So if anybody wants to claim my £85 refund or whatever it was that I never recovered as moral justification for sticking their too old kid in their room, I happily donate my rights to you! This may soothe someone’s moral compass, but it doesn’t alter the technical legal position. To book the room, you have to enter a child’s age as 15 or below on the drop-down menu, so technically you are then obtaining services by deception if your child is over 15. I personally don’t care either way what people choose to do about this, but it is technically against the law and that could be part of your consideration.

@ZeldaWillTellYourFortune the hotel I work at is always at 95% minimum capacity so the supply and demand argument is ridiculous and just puts extra pressure on staff because when guests are paying over £500 a night for a room which is on average usually £100 a night then they usually go looking for reasons to complain and get money back.

The cost to turn the room around stays the same, it doesn't go up just because Taylor Swift or some other celebrity is having a concert nearby. Staff wages stay the same, supplier costs stay the same and utilities are still the same, it's just pure greed.

Also if you think it's not greed ask anyone who has access to bookings why they still keep selling rooms when they have reached capacity so guests often get out booked to other hotels. There's absolutely no need for this because they are still charged even if they don't show on the day so effectively that room might get sold twice. They rely on guests not turning up and will chance it to make that extra few hundred pounds. Nearly every day we are at least-5 on available rooms because of this tactic and you only have to look at hotels such as PI to see the profit they make to see how their tactics work.

I don't think you understand the meaning of "supply and demand" in this context. It has nothing to do with the occupancy rate at your hotel.

It is the fiduciary responsibility of publicly traded companies to maximize profits for their shareholders.

There's nothing wrong with selling a room for whatever the traffic will bear.

I don’t mindlessly follow rules just for the sake that they are rules.

And that is a good point isn't it ? Because what posters are saying is they disagree with an arbitrary rule put in place by one particular company - a rule that is unfair and has no logic aside from an extra way for an already rich company to make yet more money .

It doesn't matter whether the guest believes it's fair or unfair. Cheating is cheating.

The way to avoid the "unfair" rule is to lodge elsewhere, not defraud the company. The profit level is irrelevant.

If we are always 95% minimum occupancy I'd say there's demand all year not just when there's an event on but yet the price difference is staggering.

I can hypothesise one reason why Premier Inn have introduced a rule which on the face of it splits families unnecessarily to make money, but then doesn’t have any impact because so many families ignore it, with the apparent blessing of staff.

It may be that what Premier Inn most wish to discourage is groups of four unrelated adults booking one room to save money, thereby taking advantage of something intended to cater for families. Since it is very difficult to check ages (and Premier Inn choose not to attempt this), a cut off of age 15 perhaps deters freeloading adults more than families with slightly older children. This doesn’t directly answer the question in this thread, just interesting sometimes to try to understand possible reasons behind policies.

There is demand all year but the demand during, say, a festival is far greater and the market will bear a far greater price. Why on earth wouldn't a profit-centered company capitalize on that? Companies aren't in business to 'be nice,' they are in business to make money for their investors.

Supply and demand is not about the availability of the rooms. It's an economic concept.

I attend an annual event in a normally moderately-priced town wehre a room would be £89. We pay more like £349 a night for the four nights we are there. That's just the way it goes.

Also as to the classification of "adults" at a certain age; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the legal age of majority. That legal age is relevent to laws and public policy, and certain privileges.

"Adult" in terms of a hotel chain, coach fare, etc., is just a word for classifying different categories of guests. They might have child, adult, senior citizen.

Would you feel better if they called it "junior guest" vs "senior guest" ? Or "toddler, primary, tween, teen, adult, senior" ? Or "child, young adult, adult"? They can make up whatever categories they want for guests, just as restaurants can put a limit on who can order child meals, or airlines can set whatever age they want for unaccompanied minors. Zero to do with what the national law considers "adult" vs "minor."

Why though?

Why if LAW in the UK states that an adult is 18+ can some hotel chains, theme parks, restaurants, train companies etc deem that 16+ is an adult and charge extra?

16/17 year old DC are still, by law in the UK classed as a child. Why does a ‘category of a guest’ suddenly become relevant in the 16/17 age group, when they can’t stay in this establishment by themselves, they need an ADULT with them, therefore by that conclusion the hotel still deem them as a child?

Because the hotels can do as they please. They are setting policy for their business, not making law.

Words can have more than one meaning, you know.

They can have a different meaning when it suits!