The Ethics of Refunds

I saw a note on the MSN News page yesterday talking about how some of the other guests who were staying at the Beverly Hilton hotel on the night Whitney Houston died have been requesting refunds, claiming that security kept demanding to see their key cards and identification, how the fire and rescue people (and the sirens) kept them from sleeping, and so on. So far the hotel is refusing to grant any such requests, on the grounds that they had nothing to do with either the death of Ms. Houston or the management of the emergency response personnel, and there’s no way they could promise you a visit free of such distractions if they wanted to. In this specific case I have to side with the hotel – and the people leaving comments on the story page – and ask the complainers if they don’t have something better to do, but it got me to thinking about the ethical responsibilities a place of lodging has to its customers…

I think that most people would agree that any business – hospitality industry or otherwise – is not responsible for events beyond their control; it’s the reason insurance policies have “acts of God” phrases in them, for example. Certainly, there is no way anyone could promise you a hotel visit where nothing whatsoever would disturb you, and no chance that you would believe them if they did. It would be possible for a company to promise you complete satisfaction or your money back, but even those types of offer generally have conditions and restrictions – and it’s hard to imagine how any company could make money by guaranteeing that there would be no noise, crowds, emergencies or other disturbances in the middle of any big city and end up with enough paying customers leftover to make a living…

On the other side of the issue, any hotel that routinely does business with major celebrities should already be accustomed to dealing with unusual requirements, large numbers of people coming and going at strange times of the day, excessive noise, fuss and activity, security risks and invasion of privacy issues, not to mention outright stalkers, swindlers and thieves. Expecting them to be able to control what the police or crime scene investigators do on the premises would be unfair, but any facility that gets as many A-list and eccentric customers as the Beverly Hilton (for example) routinely does would be disingenuous to say that they have no experience with guests doing unexpected and upsetting things. While a death on the premises is probably beyond their control, you might reasonably expect them to cope with any lesser emergency without disturbing or inconveniencing their guests – assuming they could do so without driving prices beyond what their customers are willing to pay, of course…

As with all other features, quiet, privacy and solitude are entirely dependent on how much one is willing to spend on them. A facility that offered individual cottages, each on its own lot at a considerable distance from each other, and each with its own driveways, parking lot, staff, communications and utilities could guarantee you that any terrestrial disturbance going on will be caused by you and your companions, but the cost would be astronomical, and unless there were enough travelers who were willing to pay that amount, the company would rapidly go under. At the same time, it seems clear that if you are paying for space in which to rest and sleep, the people who are providing it should do the best they can to make things as quiet and restful as they possibly can without bankrupting themselves. So that brings us to an obvious question:

How much responsibility should a business offering lodging have for keeping their guests away from anything that could upset them, inconvenience them, or prevent them from sleeping? While we can agree that taking no effort is unacceptable, and refunding all charges for the slightest disturbance is impossible, at what point between those extremes has the company done all it could be expected to? Or, to put it another way, how bad do things have to get before the company has an ethical responsibility to refund the customer’s money as compensation for the value they have lost due to disturbances, noise, and so on?

It’s worth thinking about…