Premier Travel Inn profteering from Alton Towers closure

[TheGrocer]

Hi there
I have a new story you may be interested re Premier Travel Inn at Rugely profiting from many customers who had planned to visit Alton Towers last weekend 6/6 and 7/6.

I had pre booked a room at the Rugely Travel Inn using the Whitbread web site and booked 2 rooms under their lowest cost offer Non Flexaible Premier Saver Rate to £232. The sole purpose of driving myself and my 3 kids 300 miles each way to the Hotel was to treat the kids to a weekend break at Alton Towers. Im not currently working and so couldn’t afford to book the Alton Towers hotel or though now I wish I had.

After making the booking the terrible accident at Alton Towers occurred and the park announced it would be closed for several days while the investigation continued. On Friday 5/6 the Alton Towers web site announced it would not be open over the weekend and I therefore called the Hotel and the Customer Service line to try and re-arrange the booking due to the tragic accident and the fact the park would be closed. I met with a brick wall and blank refusal of any type of re-booking. I have attached my letter to them and their response and Im sure many families for the Premier Travel Inn hotels would have met with the same fate. While they hide behind the T&Cs of the booking they aren’t doing the RIGHT thing and its disgusting behaviour.

I have contacted BBC and Watchdog - Has anyone else been affected by this??? Thanks for reading

Whitbread Customer Services letter below and my original letter below that.:

Hi [name removed by MNHQ],

Thanks for your email.
Your reservation [removed by MNHQ] was booked under the Non Flexible Premier Saver rate.

Although we appreciate no one books a hotel room with the expectation to cancel or amend, the only reason we're able to offer these discounted rooms is by adhering to strict booking terms. This is why customers are informed at the time of booking that they will not be able to cancel or amend the reservation, once confirmed.

For these reasons, we regret that we would not be able to assist with your request on this occasion.

Please note that any pre-paid supplement charges for breakfast, meal deals etc will be refunded back to the card held on the booking.

Kind Regards
[name removed by MNHQ].
Email Support Team
Premier Inn - Central Reservations
Telephone: 0333 003 0025 (option 2)
Email: [email protected]
Write to us at: Oakley House, Oakley Road, Luton, LU4 9QH.

-----------------

Hello
I have contacted you today in relation to my reservation [removed by MNHQ] held in the name of [removed by MNHQ] for two room on the night of Friday 5/6/15 and Sat 6/6/15. The rooms were booked under the Premier Saver Rate at a total cost of £232 at your Rugely Hotel. The purpose of travelling 300 miles from my home in Kent with my children was to enjoy a weekend at Alton Towers. As you will know after the tragic events earlier this week the park has now announced that it will remain closed over the weekend thus making my trip a waste of time.
I contacted your reservations team and your guest relations team speaking to [name removed by MNHQ] to be told that nor change of reservation can be made! While I understand the T&Cs of the booking surely you have been inundated by customers who through no fault of their own have literally nowhere to go.

The team at Alton Towers have been great in breaking their T&Cs and re-issuing tickets etc. and to be honest it seems as if Whitbread is taking advantage of a situation which has been a personal tragedy for those involved in the accident. The two hotels closest to Alton towers appear fully booked when I made the booking and I’m sure over 50% of those staying over the weekend had planned to visit Alton Towers. Yes I know the T&Cs which have been quoted to me but come on Whitbread let’s look at this from the angle of what may be the right thing to do and prove that you have some feelings for the situation that I and many other families find themselves in. From a PR point of view you could take this two ways - one show your loyal customers some flexibility due to the problems that have beset the theme park or two you could provide some great local TV and radio negative press when they are contacted as the perception is your taking advantage of an unusual set of circumstances!

I’m not asking for a refund just the opportunity to rebook to an alternative date when they re-open?

Yours hoping you will do the RIGHT thing please??

yabu. you booked a room which was not refundable also Rugeley is no where near alton towers.

I always book non flexible. The savings I make over several bookings is greater than the loss of a booking. If it got to the stage of me having to cancel a few times, then I'd start making flexible bookings.

The op took that chance in order to make a saving. It was a chance and it unfortunately backfired. Lesson learned, move on. It could easily have worked out and then the op would have benefited from the decision. We wouldn't have heard any moaning then...

YABU. How can you honestly think this is profiteering? Do you know what profiteering means?

And hotels chains would fight the application of Krell in these sorts of cases to the Supreme Court, because if upheld, the concept of non-refundable hotel bookings would cease to exist.

And they would be right.

I always book non flexible.

I tried to convince my previous employer to book plane flights non-flexible. The rate of cancellations was about 15% but the premium for refundable/rebookable was massively more than that.

But we got into a variation on the myth of stranded capital; people are extremely irrational about "wasting" money, and will pay more than c.x (where c is the chance of losing the money and x is the amount of money at stake) to avoid losing x. When you're doing it once and x is large for you, that's reasonable, but if you do it regularly it makes no sense.

Just scrolled right through the thread to see if the OP had been back. That's 10 mins of my life gone, never to return.

Profiteering??? Hahahahahaha

Why on earth did the OP just go and do something else in the area I wonder?

Perhaps he's written to the Times: "Sir, it is with disgust and dismay that I note that a non-flexible booking with a certain hotel chain is, in fact, not at all flexible. It is most certainly underhand behaviour on the part of said hotel chain. Sincerely, Disgusted and Offended of Dullsville."

Hahahahaha

Sorry but this is exactly why flexible rates exist. If you don't want to take the risk that your plans may have to change (whether through your own fault or not), then book flexible rates.

The naming in the Op is

Don't book Rugeley it's at least 45 to 50 mins away!!

Agree with pp Op you could have used your imagination and visited other places in area and still had a great time.

And hotels chains would fight the application of Krell in these sorts of cases to the Supreme Court, because if upheld, the concept of non-refundable hotel bookings would cease to exist.

And then we would ALL lose out by not having the option to get cheaper bookings

Thanks for explaining DoJo. I agree that it's highly unlikely anyone is going to take issue with the Premier Inn employees and I'm maybe projecting a little because there are people out there who I'd rather didn't know where I work or how I could be contacted, but I'd be really pissed off if my name had been posted up on a (very popular) forum. And I'd expect the owners of that forum to remove my details, if they'd been told that a post contained identifying information, not just remove the poster's own personal details. However it looks as though it's been fixed now, so all good

Wow. Sorry op but YABU so much it hurts!

Christ on a bike

And then we would ALL lose out by not having the option to get cheaper bookings

Or the cheaper bookings wouldn't be as attractive. One of the things Premier and Easy do to make their yield management more acceptable to customers is that they guarantee (either explicitly or implicitly) that you won't save by waiting. Ten years ago, there were a lot of incentives to delay booking, because "last minute" type deals were very prevalent. These days, I think Easy promise that the fare on day x will never be lower on day x+1, and hotel chains at least officially do the same thing.

If advance booking pre-pay no-change were prevented (or their close cousins advance booking pre-pay expensive change) then we'd go back ten years to the days of lots of standby fares and rates. For most people, that's bad, and it would be especially bad for people with fixed holiday dates.

IKnowRight If you show all messages and use Ctrl-F, or Cmnd-F on a Mac, you can search for the OP's screen-name and not waste your ten minutes!

IKnowRight

Instead of wasting all that time scrolling, you can set MN so that the OP's posts are highlighted throughout each thread. Makes it so much easier. Click on the Customise link at the top of Talk home page. You can highlight your own posts in a different colour too.

I'm waiting for OP to come back triumphant with a link to the DM...

Loval Would you please walk on some ground so that I can worship it? That's a better tip than mine!

Thanks Andrewofgg, just been into settings and highlighted the OP's posts

There were loads of entertaining responses though so not as much of a waste of time as all that :)

xposts with loval
my threads now look very colourful

Oh how I wish the OP would come back. Has he posted anywhere else do we know? It's a calculated campaign for publicity if I ever saw one.

But a very badly thought out and badly written one. Can't imagine it will get any sympathy. OP really has no idea.