CHILDREN have scribbled on the duvet covers. Adults have hung wet clothes on lampshades.
Some have spilled red wine.
And in this case, someone vomited on the carpet.
There were even cigarette burn marks on the couch.
These are examples of the kind of damage hotels have to deal with after some Singaporeans host their parties in hotel rooms.
While most of the hotels The New Paper On Sunday contacted declined to comment, citing privacy reasons, those who did confirmed that partygoers can be difficult to manage.
And there's not very much the hotels can do about it.
One hotel public relations manager, who declined to be named, said: 'We take it as it comes. It's very hard to take precautions as we don't want to offend them. When they come and pay, they want to enjoy themselves.'
One way is to charge guests for the damages they cause, although only as a last resort.
But when they have to pay, the sum can be eye-popping.
Recently, The New Paper ran a report about how a group of partygoers got billed $1,400 for the damage after a Christmas Eve celebration at Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel.
Another group, Mr Foo, 20, and his friends, all students who declined to be named, were slapped with a $1,700 charge by the same hotel after a New Year's Eve party there.
That's the second reported case for Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel in the space of just a few days.
Mr Foo and four of the revellers involved met The New Paper On Sunday after reading the account of the other group of partygoers.
He said his party was a small get-together of 10 people, ages ranging from 16 to about 20.
They booked the junior suite at Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel for $353, he said.
One of their mothers had cooked curry chicken, bee hoon, cakes, cookies and other tasty dishes, which they brought with them.
There were soft drinks and some alcohol - vodka and tequila.
They played music from a laptop, and described the party as 'fun, but not out of control'.
However, they admitted they may have talked a bit too loudly, and a hotel staffer came to their room twice to tell them to quieten down.
One of Mr Foo's friends, Mei, 19, admitted that it was 'quite messy', with leftover food and cakes.
The smokers had also used plastic cups as ashtrays. They claimed they did so because the hotel had failed to respond to their request for an ashtray to be brought up to their room.
And they claimed they did not smoke near the couch.
One of them, Mr Ahmad (not his real name), 19, vomited on the carpet by the side of the bed around midnight. He said he was suffering from stomach flu.
He left a larger than palm-sized stain.
'It's not really fair... you can't control when you puke,' he said.
But they said they cleaned up the mess immediately, using a plastic party hat to hold the vomit.
The next day, Mr Foo did not expect to be told that they had caused damage to the room.
He said he was led up by a staffer, with hotel security, to the room, where five other hotel employees were already present.
He claimed one of them 'was very rude' and gave him a lecture.
He said: 'He was, like, what did you do to my room?'
He said the $1,700 charge was for steaming the carpet, closing the room for one day and to fix a couch which had burns on it.
Mr Foo insisted they didn't cause the cigarette burns.
Not first hotel party
This isn't the first time they had a hotel party. MrSim, 18, one of Mr Foo's friends, said they had an even bigger party last May for a birthday at a different hotel.
Mr Ahmad said they broke a glass and stained the carpet, but they didn't have to pay any damages.
Said Mr Lee Kin Seng, Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel marketing and communications manager: 'We can assure you that any damages charged and collected were well within scope of the loss of business, or costs incurred by the hotel, and were, in the interest of fairness, understated.'
Mr Kellvin Ong, general manager of Rendezvous Hotel Singapore, said partygoers, who make up less than 5 per cent of his guests, are generally well-behaved, though sometimes the hotel has problems containing their noise level.
He said the worst case they have encountered was when guests hung their wet clothing on a lamp shade, causing it to burn and lose shape.
But they try not too charge too much.
'The costs are usually low as we only seek to recover the cost of replacing the items and not to 'punish' the guests for vandalising,' he said.
The highest charge 'by far' has been $200, he said.
Another hotel public relations manager, who declined to be identified, said she was concerned by impressions that hotels are out to make a profit out of damage caused by guests.
If the charge is high, it is because the furniture and fixtures 'adhere to a design concept and are of premium quality'.
She said: 'It is more often than not a bigger loss to hotels when such a situation arises, as the room would have to be blocked off for the repairs, which means business lost.'
Her hotel - a five star hotel - has only two or three cases a year of charging guests for damages, she said.
- additional reporting by Han Su-Ying
This article was first published in The New Paper on Jan 11, 2009.
