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Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

For some reason, the hotel business seems pretty shady. My sense from crawling the web is that it's one of the areas that have the most blackhat SEO as well. Straight up linkfarms.

This is sheer speculation, but I do think the hotel business is really convenient to get into if you have a questionable side-business and need to launder money. Who is to say if a room was occupied or not that night, if that foreigner who paid in cash really existed. Can pretty much just trickle money into the books. I imagine you could also run contraband out of them fairly easily. Lots of people coming and going with all sorts of luggage. Who is to say if they are as full when they leave as they were when they arrived? Great for prostitution too, trafficking. The girls can tidy up the rooms during the day.

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The entire travel industry is shaddy. I used to work for a price comparison site for holidays that had a side business as a travel agent. It was well known that none of the prices listed were the real price. Even with a rather generous staff discount being applied the sales agent was one surprised that it was just x over the listed price. They would say you were buying a package holiday but in reality they were just doing bookings for you via the standard public website for everything but the hotel. They would take the hotel payment first and then look at the price for the flights by which point you're already sold what the company sells and you need to pay for the flights no matter what. They'll then suggest that you do the transfer booking yourself to save money but it'll literally be the same price.

When I joined the first meeting my first day had people talking about how they got up at 2am and then 4am to make sure internal processes were still working. They had people who were barred from the office and were massive screaming matches if they came in which was mostly management yelling at people for talking to them.

On the money laundering aspect, I doubt this since most gangsters are busy with other businesses such as running taxis and bus services that are mainly cash businesses while hotels are mainly internet and card payments and largerly coming from business accounts unless it's a tourist spot.

I think you have the makings of a new Netflix series there. I propose it be called Check In (or Cheque In for those of us in the UK).

I can't tell if you're joking -- but in the UK you "check in" to a hotel. A cheque is, specifically, a type of financial/banking note.

cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/check_in

In the US I believe a Check is the same as a Cheque in the UK. Granted cheque is a homophone but both usages denote money (more so with the US title) with the added benefit of the connotation of arriving at a hotel. I am a big fan of puns.

The paper item "a cheque" is called "a check" in the US -- which presumably happened because "a cheque" has something to do with the verb "to check" (as in, "to check the health of"; to verify the status of something by asking/seeing it").

When you check-in to a hotel you aren't "handing over a cheque", you are checking-in with the reception. Ie., you are speaking to reception and checking your reservation/room.

To "check in with someone" is to have a chat or talk to a person to "check" how they are.

As someone who speaks the queen's English, I would like to recommend you look up what a cheque is.

Absolutely. "In the UK you can pay a bill with a cheque, and in the US you can settle a check with a bill"

There's a lot of potential here. I'm thinking a slow burning Breaking Bad set up that sells itself as a light hearted Fawlty Towers-type show about a wide eyed Monopoly enthusiast fulfilling his dream, but with every season it gets darker and grittier and ends as a tangled web of international crime and corruption. Everything spirals out of control. The hotel is hosting a big conference and the minister of whatever is holding a keynote speech and the hotel is full of press, meanwhile the johannesburg arms dealers killed a prostitute that turned out to be an undercover cop and the body is still in their room, also there's a call from some really angry russian loan sharks, they're coming for their fucking money right now.

Consider my subscription renewed.

You had me at slow burning Breaking Bad. I would watch the hell out of this.

This is almost exactly Ozark, if anyone likes the idea and wants to watch now.

I've kind of assumed that the posters were being ironic and describing Ozark, but maybe not.

> This is sheer speculation, but I do think the hotel business is really convenient to get into if you have a questionable side-business and need to launder money.

Unless you're talking total dumps, which relies on cash business only (and does'nt have a turnover to make money laundering worthwhile) I think you're flat out wrong.

My guess is that reputable hotels take in very little cash (it's actually frowned upon and they will ask for a security deposit). The lion share will be credit card transactions and the rest will be invoices for corporate customers and large travel agents.

Not much scope for money laundering here.

Argentina president Cristina Kirchner is accused of having a hotel chain in Patagonia for money laundery purposes. Investigators say the hotel never received anyone despite the books saying is was full for years.

> For some reason, the hotel business seems pretty shady.

Any business where people in charge have no affinity with the end product automatically becomes shady. The only source of pride for these people is to rake in more money, so it's even difficult to blame them.

> Who is to say if a room was occupied or not that night, if that foreigner who paid in cash really existed.

That's why in some countries ID is required when checking-in. Makes it a bit harder to use for money laundering.

> The girls can tidy up the rooms during the day.

Hiring a real cleaning lady seems like a good price for not ending up with filthy rooms.

> Who is to say if a room was occupied or not that night, if that foreigner who paid in cash really existed.

Here in th EU, they usually have a look at your passport. I think it's enforced by law in some places. Government overreach

Is it? Surely this simply and proportionately deals with exactly the risks above?

Not only that. In places like Thailand it is a key part of anti human traffic and child sex abuse strategy. Because it is so common, staff in most hotels are trained to spot it.

It deals with those risks, and it's still a disproportionate overreach.

I don't understand your point. In "Breaking Bad" if he had a hotel instead of a car wash, he could claim it was 95% occupied every night. Thereby washing large quantities of cash. In the EU do they have to keep IDs for a certain amount of time or something? If so then you just keep a few on file and hand those over when asked.

It depends on countries, in Italy the data on the ID of guests (of a hotel or similar) is transmitted electronically (within 24 hours) to the Police.

This since a few years, 2013 I believe, until then you had to send (via snail mail) the "records" or bring them daily to the nearest Police (or Carabinieri) station.

The provision is since 1978, it was a Law approved in a short time due to the "emergency of fighting terrorism".

Thanks that makes so much more sense. That would be harder to work around. Maybe give out "free" rooms as promotions then on the books claim they paid 1K a night and another 1k in room service or something.

Spain does the same thing.

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