Yeah, similar experiences on both counts in early 2000s. The hotel's refusal to honor a reservation even with cash in advance was part of the new "not the country I grew up in" feeling, those years.
It has more to do with having a credit card on file in case of damages.
And like I said in another reply, the country you grew up in was probably different than the country my still living parents grew up in in the Jim Crow south.
Yes, it was. One thing there seems to be more of is bundling of politics, like "Y is bad" as rejoinder to "X is good" with no necessary link between them.
I think I asked what deposit they would need. It had never been an issue before.
My point isn’t political. But when people wax poetically about how great the US use to be, it definitely wasn’t great even in the 70s for a percentage of people living in the south
