To warn you that Travelodge routinely 'overbook'!!

[badger2005]

We had booked to see a show, and ages ago I also booked a travelodge so we'd be right next to the venue. When we turned up ready to book into our travelodge (about 5.45pm) we were told that they had had to move us into a different travelodge in another place - miles from the venue!
This wasn't because of any kind of emergency - they just overbook on purpose apparently and you just get booted out even if you have booked a room in advance.
When we got back home, travelodge sent me an email asking for feedback, and I asked if I could have a refund. That seems to me like the absolute minimum - I booked into a hotel and they reneged on the booking - surely I should get a refund?! But they just blanked me. I don't know if I can get a refund - I'm guessing I will just be talking to a computer about it forever if I try.

I've found out since that not all hotel chains do this. I'm NEVER booking Travelodge again. Just warning you all!

Everyone knows that airlines oversell seats.

This isn't well known.

They should be required to advertise it so that if actually having a place to sleep on the night you need one in your chosen location is important to you, you can book a different hotel.

Obviously.

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper

What does book a room mean if not to reserve?

Just because you don't know it doesn't mean it's not well known.

Someone who doesn't fly wouldn't know airlines oversell seats.

I can assure you that, because the overwhelming majority of hotels are part of large chains, the vast majority of hotels in the U.K. do overbook. The exceptions will tend to be small, independent family-run establishments in tourist areas.

Just because it is well known among those who work in the industry doesn't mean it is well known among the general population.

In any case, it's not the same as an overbooked flight because everyone is getting on that flight at the same time and so the airline will generally ask for volunteers to be bumped in exchange for often quite generous compensation.

With hotel rooms it's the poor bugger checking in at midnight after a wedding or the night before an early flight who gets told there is no room at the inn and unless there's another similar hotel next door they are up shit creek.

Well, Margot, now you know. Along with the vast majority of the public, not just those who work in the trade.

Doesn't mean they have to announce it on their website

"Oh, by the way bookers, we have a 0.0005% chance of sending you to a sister hotel if we over fill on that specific night"

The hotel has a greater chance of closing entirely for the night and having to re book all its guests elsewhere due to flooding / electrics failing / norovirus outbreak / ICT systems crash.

Would you like disclaimers for all of those too, to pop up on the screen?

The hotel has a greater chance of closing entirely for the night and having to re book all its guests elsewhere due to flooding / electrics failing / norovirus outbreak / ICT systems crash

This is true. In my hotel days I've out-booked far more people because of damage to a room or a maintenance problem, or in an island situation because boats are cancelled due to weather (so boat travellers can't leave, but plane travellers can still arrive) than I have because of deliberate revenue over-booking.

As a combination of work and personal travel over 20 years I've stayed hundreds and hundreds of nights in hotels and I've been out-booked myself exactly once, from a hotel in Torquay that had suffered storm damage.

@Hecate01 - what happened with your -6 last night? Did you have to book anyone out?

Yeah so instead of staying in the hotel in the city centre across the road from the train station, you can opt to book in Barbara's B&B a 30 min taxi ride away.

It's apples and oranges. If you want anything that a large hotel has to offer, like a restaurant, pool, spa, room service, rewards points, prime location, round the clock service, business centres, meeting and event suites etc, then you're looking at a hotel that will overbook rooms.

"A sister hotel" is a very dishonest odd way to describe sending people who have booked a hotel at Gatwick to spend the night in Grantham.

Or I could book the hotel in the city centre across the road from the train station and end up spending the night on an industrial estate 10 minutes further away than Barbara's B&B.

The actual reality is that you do move them to a sister hotel. Big chains have multiple hotels under the same corporate umbrella in the same towns.

The furthest we ever sent anyone was 5 miles away.

But I can see that you want to remain indignant

However it's incredibly unlikely, but if it did happen, your transport would be covered by the hotel.

How many hotels have you stayed in in your entire life? How many times have you been outbooked?

Small independent hotels, probably not, unless they happen to employ a smart geek to analyse their data. Or they like to gamble…

You make it sound like they're stupid or bad at business - rather than simply honest and not greedy.

Well, of course, they mean the same thing - but if somebody is lying to you by pretending to have accepted your booking but not actually reserving the room that you have booked, I'm saying that people should be warned about this.

Like the bank ads where they tell you that if somebody phones you out of the blue, claiming to be from your bank, and asking for personal and account information, you mustn't trust that they are telling the truth.

Seriously, the one main factor why people choose to book to stay in a hotel is because of where it's located. They need to be in that area for that day/night/ready for the next day.

However amazing, beautiful and perfect your hotel in Ambleside may be, you're highly unlikely to get people who live in Grasmere regularly booking to stay overnight with you.

The main purpose of a hotel is basically to temporarily relocate your home somewhere else. Any extra luxuries are a peripheral bonus. If it's either right next to your home or otherwise 100 miles away from where you need to be, it's as useless as a Ferrari in a swimming pool.

every hotel I have worked in overbooks. It's usually because on average they can have 1-6 no shows a night. If there is a big event on a lot won't over book if the cities are full. If it's a standard night though and the city have availability then yeah will go minus by 1 or 2. Very rare we have to out book tbh though.

mmm imagine my joy at turning up to a hotel to find that my pre agreed later check in room had been given to someone else... it was an accessible room. They suggested I could travel to another hotel. I asked how I might do that from my power wheelchair (having been dropped off that morning at the venue I was lecturing at, a few minutes up the road and that lift now being hundreds of miles away and about the only vehicle in the UK adapted to take my chair...)

When it became obvious I was going nowhere I got some huge suite of rooms on the top floor, they still tried to make me pay for it (I did not). It did take them ringing multiple taxi companies, some who confirmed they could not take it, a couple showed up and then agreed they could in fact, not take me for them to accept this.

I'd booked the fucking room THAT morning!

The first time this happened though, i stupidly went off to the supposedly accessible room in another hotel... to find it was accessed via a corridor down two sets of stairs and multiple sets of doors that were too narrow. Fortunately then I was using a manual and the wheels off meant the chair fit through...

I understand why hotels do this, I do not understand why they see fit to do it with accessible rooms booked to wheelchair users!

How many hotels have you stayed in in your entire life? How many times have you been outbooked?

That's irrelevant - it shouldn't ever happen at all, unless an unavoidable disaster or emergency has occurred. But if an emergency has occurred, that will mean that nobody can use the room at all - not that they can charge somebody else, to whom they've given your room, and also keep the money that you have paid for it by fobbing you off with whatever they can get away with.

I don't accept the 'justification' that hardly anybody is ever affected by it, so it doesn't matter; how is that meant to help you if you are one of those very few people who are affected?

That's disgusting, WiddlinDiddlin - them creating a problem from their own greed and incompetence and then frantically phoning around in front of you to see how they might be able to just get rid of you and offload their 'problem' (when you mistakenly believed you were actually a valued customer).

Incidentally, are we to assume that no hotel ever did this in the days before flexible bookings became a thing? Or indeed does it now when somebody has already paid upfront for their non-refundable room (except we already know this not to be the case)?

Anyway, don't hotels normally charge you more for a flexible arrangement - so you have to risk paying extra for more options when you may not have needed to, or otherwise agree to lock yourself in for the cheapest available price? What is the purpose of that extra charge if not as a kind of insurance to mitigate against their risking an empty room? If they already overbook so that they will never risk a room going empty without anybody paying for it, why would they need to charge you extra for flexibility?

You've got to love how they have minimised this scam by calling it revenue management and normalised it by saying it's standard industry practice. Basically it is a scam. They take your money for a service they know they can only provide if a 3rd party does something they can not control (doesn't turn up). They know this when they take your money. The terms say they can provide alternative accomodation if they can not provide the room. Most people think this will be because of some unforeseen event and accept the terms. They don't think it is because the hotel is deliberately gambling with their room to maximise their revenue. At the very least the terms and conditions should say we run an overbooking system and in the event of everyone deciding to use their rooms you might be allocated a room at a different hotel. Funny how they don't say that, isn't it.

So when you say all hotels do this, do you mean only big chains with sister hotels located no more than five miles away do this, or do you mean all hotels do this? Because both those things cannot be true.

It is relevant because the process works 99% of the time.

Every time a hotel runs at less than 100% occupancy, it costs them money which means prices will have to go up, flexible booking rates will have to stop and business will suffer.

They are, of course, a business at the end of the day so of course they want to make money. It's a massive shame that some guests are affected by outbooking, but more times than not they are over compensated.

It is relevant because the process works 99% of the time.

...and fails one in every hundred people who thought they could trust you.

Every time a hotel runs at less than 100% occupancy, it costs them money which means prices will have to go up

Not if people have paid upfront for a non-refundable, non-flexible room - it's actually cheaper for the hotel if somebody has paid and doesn't occupy a room (no need to clean) or eat the breakfast that they've paid for. They overbook these customers too, which cannot be explained away as anything other than greed.

At any rate, if it's 'only' 1% of customers who are affected, I highly doubt that their bookings would drop massively if they increased all of their prices by 1%, thus negating any 'need' for this sharp practice at all.

Most people, if given the choice, would much rather pay an extra 1% for a guaranteed booking rather than not pay it and just have to hope for the best that they might get the room that they booked.

It was not me who said "all hotels do this". I said its "standard practice". Maybe you have me mixed up with another poster.

And I cannot speak for how far other hotels send their out booked guests, only my own experiences.