Resident's Bar

Buceph

A group of us were staying in a hotel a while back, usually it's hostels for us, and we were delighted at the idea of a resident's bar (a bar that will serve alcohol after normal closing times.) When we went to use it, we were told that we had to charge it to our rooms, and to do that we'd have to put a deposit or credit card pre-approval in at the main desk. We figured that they just then don't put the charge through until normal opening hours, thus avoiding selling alcohol at an illegal time. Is that correct or is there something else to it? I remember the idea of being a "Bona Fide Traveller" and getting drink at the train station on Good Friday.

coylemj

No it's nothing like that, the hotel wants to make sure that all the transactions go through the room billing system so that the night porter or barman doesn't skim some of the cash plus by making it cashless they can more easily keep out non-residents. Some hotels do operate a cash bar for residents, it depends on local policy but having it cashless means that the night porter isn't responsible for accounting for the cash the next day plus if the drinks are being signed for and nobody has to mess about with notes and coins, the (at that stage drunk) residents will usually order and consume more drink so it makes commercial sense to operate it with no cash.

You say you normally stay in hostels so maybe you're not familiar with the normal procedure when you check in to a hotel which is that they want to swipe your credit card in case you empty the minibar or make phone calls using the room phone or charge drink or food to your room when you're in the bar or restaurant.

If the resident's bar was cashless then at least one of you needed to have a credit card pre-approved at reception, that way the hotel is covered in case you do a disappearing act the next morning, all standard stuff.