Rip off?

Booked the Sheraton @ T3 in Toronto when we arrive on Aug 7. It was
cheap. Total at CAD100.57 taxes and all. Special promo. But on the
way back if I want to stay there, the price jumped. It will be at
least double the price what I will pay on Aug 7. What gives?

Just dropped iron-wife at Pudong for her course. We decided to stay
overnight there at the venue hotel as it beats rush hour traffic
coming home. For those do not know, the entire district of Pudong is
under construction. All major exit points are totally "blocked" by
constructions. With rain in rush hour, will be lucky if we could get
home in 2 hours. The hotel is Pudong Ramada Plaza (http://www.ramadaplazapd.com/en/reservation.html
). The room rate was RMB 899+ taxes per night. We initially were to
spend two nights but decided against it. The client ( 8th alphabet +
"_"eter Pan without the "eter Pan" ) was to pay for the hotel; then at
the last minute, it said since we live in the same city as the
training, it refused to pay. Right, do you know how big Shanghai is?
And the traffic is like here? The HR department is based in the god
knowing all mighty US of A. Obviously, this HR department must be
located in a small peon size city for cost saving so don't see the
need for hotel room. The middle company is so nice that it offers to
pay for the hotel room. I think we will split the cost. This same
middle company did a very generous gesture to all its global
contractors not long ago, it gave out USD 1,000.00 to alleviate any
monitory stress due to this economic downturn. Very kind of this
company's founders.

O I digressed. This Ramada has a very special deal; you stay two
nights and on the next visit, you get a free night. Wow. And the
service so far we have experienced is top notch. This morning we went
to the meeting room, we were stunt! Normally, we had to rearrange the
room to our "standard" orientation and distribute materials. To our
surprise, everything was done to our requests the night before. The
materials were distributed to the way we want. And it even have a TV
and DVD player ready for us. Everything we need, the hotel staff
provided to the spec! We were laughing because we didn't have to
"bark" orders or roll up our sleeves. Save a lot of time in prep
work. This hotel is also a residence too.