To think this is bloody daft of the hotel?

[JurassicPark101]

I’ve booked a hotel for Friday night until Monday morning. Unfortunately due to childcare issues I found out today that I won’t be able to get there until Saturday morning now. It’s all been prepaid for and as it’s less than 7 days before the booking it’s completely non-refundable and can’t be rearranged.

I’m not too fussed about it being non-refundable, totally understand they probably wouldn’t be able to fill the room again at short notice. Anyway, I phone the hotel to let them know that I do still want the booking but that I won’t be arriving until about 9.30ish on the Saturday rather than the Friday afternoon as originally planned. Receptionist on phone says ‘that’s fine, thanks for letting us know. Just so you know you’re welcome to use the facilities but your room won’t be available until check in at 3pm.” I reiterate that I’ve already paid for the room (and breakfast and dinner which I won’t be having either) from Friday so it should be available when I get there at 9.30. Again “sorry, no but we can’t allow early check in under any circumstances at the moment. We’re totally fully booked and the cleaners just can’t get the rooms ready before this.”

I ask to speak to someone else as I assume she’s possibly new or young or thick as mince. She passes me over to another woman but I hear her say “can you speak to this lady, she won’t understand why she can’t check in at 9.30am”. I explain the situation again. New lady replies with “I empathise with your situation but as we are fully booked we simply can’t allow you to check in nearly 6 hours early”. I tell her that it’s not 6 hours early, it’s 18 hours late. Im booked from the Friday night. I’m paying for the Friday night but I can’t get there until Saturday morning. I’ve paid £145 for a room, dinner and breakfast and none of it will be used. If I was arriving on time, I would be able to return to my room at 9.30am if I chose to do so. She tell me that I'm not arriving on time though so the room won’t be ready until 3pm .

I ask if there’s a manager that I can email, or a head office as this is just bonkers. She gives me an email address. I write a very calm, concise email explaining that I’ll be getting there at 9.30 the day after I’m due to arrive. I’ve just had an email back (from the reception again) telling me that my room will be ready at 3pm and they hope I enjoy my stay.

How do I resolve this? They’re all mad. Aren’t they? I’m not going crazy in thinking I should be allowed in the room when I get there am I? It should be ready for 3pm on Friday so will still be ready at 9.30 on Saturday, surely?

everyone acting like you got one up on the man when hospitality is one of the most overworked/underpaid industries in the world and UK market is currently saturated with UK tourist whilst hotels are struggling everywhere to get staff - congratulations you've managed to outsmart a probably something receptionist on minimum wage.

Now it's OP's fault that staff in hospitality are underpaid? Don't think so. Look at those at the top of the industry for that. I bet the CEOs are on good money. Why aren't they making sure their staff get a decent wage? Would it eat into profits? So much easier though to blame one woman booking a weekend break than those actually in charge (who really are 'the man').

If this particular hotel hasn't twigged that OP is a repeat customer, and responded in a way designed to hang onto her, they're not very good at what they do. For the sake of reselling one night, they've lost future custom.

"I raised the fact you booked through booking.com isn't about the price its about the aspect that you then amended directly via the hotel which (granted i bet you regretted that call in the end) isn't correct, part of paying out commission to third parties is they then 'manage' that booking until arrival for amendments, cancellations ect... "

Not really because from the moment you make the booking, you deal directly with the hotel. If I'm checking in late, I inform the hotel, not booking.com.

LouHotel "Depending on how nice you were on the phone i probably would have pre checked you in on the Friday "

But the Op wasn't offered that, the staff seemed to be under the impression she wanted to check in early on Friday not a late check on Saturday.

louhotel the confirmation from booking.com allows you to cancel the entire booking for the full price via the app or contact the hotel directly via the chat option on the app or by calling the phone number of the hotel, also listed on the app. I did both.

I was perfectly polite to the people I spoke to on the phone. And yes, I continue to think the people that I spoke to, not people who work in hospitality as a whole, we’re thick as mince. I really don’t think they were trying to resell the room, they just though I wanted an early check in and wasn’t taking no for an answer.

@LouHotel

Like others have said, how on earth do you lose money if the OP checks in about 10 h after the cutoff?

Lucky to never have stayed in your hotel or any like it. Imagine arriving in another country 15 hours since you left your house to be told that even though you paid for last night, you will need to fuck off for the next 9 hours or whatever.
Especially if you're there for a meeting with clients and you feel all icky from your travels🤢

Honestly I'll try to cover some aspects here but clearly I've derailed into full hotel revenue management so I'll bow out.

Money lost is the cancellation revenue from the moment the guest was not arriving on Friday, you can disagree with it but an empty room is a revenue opportunity - you do not own a hotel room you rent it based on booking terms which will have an arrival date and departure date - you change the arrival date you've changed the terms.

@HyggeTygge occupancy as in room occupancy so 9 out of 10 rooms sold is 90% occupancy. This affects STR data which i expect is not relevant for a boutique hotel.

@TheRebelle jobsworth? I'm cool with that, I had to make 10% redundancies 11 months ago when gm's in my county were losing 75% - mainly because I have a very good revenue team whilst maintaining customer scores.

@JesusIsAnyNameFree with some certainty you have probably stayed in one like it.

Cancellation revenue really isn't a scam and yeah if they were confused by a friday/Saturday 9am arrival thats an entirely different miscommunication.

I can't believe how many 'hotel managers' are trying to pretend that it's simply not possible to check into a hotel outwith their standard check-in times.

It's weird - we all know that it can be done! In fact, every time I've ever needed to check in earlier than usual and there hasn't been an option to pay for that specifically, I've been given the option of booking from the night before to guarantee the room in the morning as a solution to the problem.

occupancy as in room occupancy so 9 out of 10 rooms sold is 90% occupancy.

Well... obviously... I think most of us understand that!
So as the room was sold, it was an occupancy, wasn't it?

You didn't answer my earlier Q about the money you expect to make from an occupied room?

@LouHotel

Honestly I'll try to cover some aspects here but clearly I've derailed into full hotel revenue management so I'll bow out.

Money lost is the cancellation revenue from the moment the guest was not arriving on Friday, you can disagree with it but an empty room is a revenue opportunity - you do not own a hotel room you rent it based on booking terms which will have an arrival date and departure date - you change the arrival date you've changed the terms.

@HyggeTygge occupancy as in room occupancy so 9 out of 10 rooms sold is 90% occupancy. This affects STR data which i expect is not relevant for a boutique hotel.

@TheRebelle jobsworth? I'm cool with that, I had to make 10% redundancies 11 months ago when gm's in my county were losing 75% - mainly because I have a very good revenue team whilst maintaining customer scores.

@JesusIsAnyNameFree with some certainty you have probably stayed in one like it.

Cancellation revenue really isn't a scam and yeah if they were confused by a friday/Saturday 9am arrival thats an entirely different miscommunication.

Absolute gobeldegook - why should we as customers care about any of this? The OP has paid for a room from 3pm Friday to 10am Sunday, whether she arrives at 3:01 on Friday or 9:30am on Saturday doesn’t matter, the room should be ready and available for her.

@LouHotel

Well I haven't, as I've arrived at ridiculous times such at 4, 5 and 6 am. I have let them know on each occasion and not once have I had anything but full understanding. I've even been told there wasn't any need to call as it happens literally all the time.

But I don't stay in places like premier inn. Maybe that makes a difference🙄

@LouHotel

I raised the fact you booked through booking.com isn't about the price its about the aspect that you then amended directly via the hotel which (granted i bet you regretted that call in the end) isn't correct, part of paying out commission to third parties is they then 'manage' that booking until arrival for amendments, cancellations ect... they actually had the right to say if you didn't arrive Friday night they would cancel the entire booking allowing them to create cancellation revenue and resell a room but that's hard-core.

Whether the word cancelled was used or not, saying your not arriving on the booked day of your terms and conditions is cancelling as its altering the booking - their occupancy which they are likely targeted on is then affected.

Depending on how nice you were on the phone i probably would have pre checked you in on the Friday but if a hotel wasn't making budget that weekend how they responded isn't dim.

I've probably had enough entitled guest (which I'm not saying you are) to last a lifetime this summer but people on this thread questioning the intelligence of hospitality staff in this current climate has really pissed me off.

If you refund the price of the room for the night then fair enough. If you're going to take the money for a service and deny the customer access to it then they are going to feel justifiably aggrieved.

I think it's extremely poor customer service and very shortsighted. In this case the hotel has lost out a repeat customer and if anyone ever told me that a hotel chain conducted themselves in the way you have described, I would never stay with them again. Hotels survive on reviews and reputation.

I think the real question here is, given that OP's friend didn't know the layout of the place and that OP wouldn't need to walk past reception to go to her room, did she wear a disguise?! Since this was an unplanned operation and said friend was already camping, I imagine any disguise would have been an obnoxiously large hat or a bush chosen from the local flora? (Are bushes considered flora? Perhaps not.)

@LouHotel so if the OP had driven 2 hours to the hotel on the Friday afternoon, checked in, then left the hotel and driven 2 hours home to stay overnight in her own house, and then driven back to the hotel on Saturday morning...what is the difference than being able to check-in in person on the Saturday morning.

She PAID for the Friday night, wasn't asking for a refund so was paying for the room to be available from Friday at 3pm. All the hotel had to do was make the room available FROM Friday at 3pm for her - nothing changes for them whether she slept in the room on Friday night or not.

when hospitality is the most underpaid/overworked industries in the world ...not sure what this has got to do with anything. As a pre paying repeat customer OP is supporting the hospitality industry. You want to keep people like her.

I rather feel like people are piling on LouHotel when she is explaining how it works. As a GM she is highly unlikely to be setting the rules herself. Depending on the company culture she might have some leeway but that leeway can come at a price (e.g. the redundancies she mentioned earlier). It comes down to corporations wanting to forecast everything and set targets for every scrap of barely measaurable data from revenue to the number of hairs on an employee's head. Somehow the bigger a business gets the more common sense it loses.

What a stupid arrangement

OP, ring booking.com direct. I had issue with a hotel I was staying at, hotel staff were useless but booking.com were so great at getting it resolved for me.

@LouHotel

Really hoping I'm not the first manager of a hotel to respond to this but here goes....

If you have informed them you are not staying Friday night so have cancelled the first night, they have every right to re sell the room for that evening and indeed say you can't check in to 3pm on Saturday because you are altering your booking that the terms and conditions are based on.

The first night of that booking is no longer room revenue its cancellation revenue - its not poor customer service or bonkers practise, cancelling Friday will have cost them revenue in other departments which will have been forecasted.

And actually seeing as you choose to book through third party and in doing so cost them 26 per cent of the cost of the reservation (lower if its a chain) they actually didn't have to take your call at all and could have told you to go through booking.com customer services which quite frankly would have been hell on earth.

But hey ho I'm glad your friend is enjoying herself nothing wrong with that, but everyone acting like you got one up on the man when hospitality is one of the most overworked/underpaid industries in the world and UK market is currently saturated with UK tourist whilst hotels are struggling everywhere to get staff - congratulations you've managed to outsmart a probably something receptionist on minimum wage. Just don't be a twat and ask housekeeping to change the bedding from your friend staying, it won't be down as a departure.

How does someone booking and paying for a room they don't use until the following morning cost overheads?

Genuinely interested and confused!

I didn't realise 3rd party sites charged so much - I'll certainly be rethinking how I book in future.

I assume the hotel think op will spend money on a drink with her meal

@JurassicPark101 I hope you have a nice break, what I find astounding in all of this apart from the hotel staff ring utterly ridiculous is that your ex presumable had agreed to have them Friday night and after you have paid for your Friday night dinner and hotel he just changes his mind and you seem to be so accepting of this and everyone else on this thread. Is he such a twat that if you told him you had made arrangements for Friday (a night out for a friends birthday say, visiting an old friend) he would still refuse to have them Friday. I can see why you wouldn’t necessarily want to say you’ve booked a hotel, he might think your loaded and start cutt8ng maintenance or asking you for some!

My sister runs a small guest house so I know how much booking. Com charges.
But when I wanted to book a hotel a few weeks ago, I checked the price on bokking.com then rang the hotel hoping they would price match it but they couldn't. The price direct with the hotel was substantially higher.

@LouHotel as someone whose family have been in the hotel industry for many many years this is rubbish. She did not cancel the room, she had paid for the room including for a dinner she didn't intend to eat so less overheads for the hotel - not even including the electricity and water she wouldn't use. The hotel didn't seem to be reselling the room either.

When we flew to Australia we arrived at 7am and decided to book a room from the night before as didn't want to wait til 3pm to have a rest so told them we weren't arriving til 9am. This was fine with the chain Hotel (intercontinental). I don't know why it's so complex for a little hotel that's unlikely to resell the room now

This is the thing, they are not breaking the contract. Hotel rooms are sold on a nightly basis and usually the exact room is not assigned until checkin. Most hotels will stipulate check-in times and many will have a time stated after which your room is not guaranteed.

In most cases if you turn up late and there is an empty room then sure, you will of course get access to it, but if there is literally no empty rooms then, well, that's really the fault of the person who didn't turn up on time and didn't adhere to their side of the contract.

@SusieBob, you seem to have missed the fact that OP has already paid for this room. Therefore she has already performed her side of the contract. Telling her she can't have access to the room - whichever room it is - at a time that she has paid for is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, breaching the contract.

@diddl

"but in that event they really are not entitled to prevent the person who paid for the room first having access to it when they want to"

But of course they are when that person then doesn't want the room!

From their POV the stay then starts on the Saturday night.

But OP did want the room, just a few hours later than the original booking. And the hotel accepted payment for it.

@BruceAndNosh

My sister runs a small guest house so I know how much booking. Com charges. But when I wanted to book a hotel a few weeks ago, I checked the price on bokking.com then rang the hotel hoping they would price match it but they couldn't. The price direct with the hotel was substantially higher.

That's utterly ridiculous but it must be that there's something in their contract with booking.com that means they aren't allowed to undercut booking.com?

Otherwise, if a hotel room is £120 pn on Booking.com and they take 25%, the hotel only gets £90 for the room. So you'd think that they'd be quite happy to take a direct booking for say £100/110 pn as there's a financial incentive for the customer to book direct and they get more money.