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!

Are you happy for there to be legislation to prevent this (which there won't ever be, but let's stick with a theoretical debate for now!) if the upshot of that is that every single hotel room you ever book will cost more? Because that's exactly what would happen. Hotels need to take a certain amount of money to stay in business, and the only way they can do that is by carefully managing their bookings to get the maximum occupancy they can. Part of that is overbooking. If they can't over book, EVERYONE has to pay more.

There are lots of instances on this thread of people saying it's happened to them, and plenty of those reference Travelodge. But some of that is due to Confirmation Bias - people are more likely to click on threads where there is personal relevance to them, so the thread title will attract a disproportionate number of people who have experienced outbooking. If you took a sample of 1000 people who stay in hotels and asked them whether they'd experienced it, it would give a much more accurate picture and it would be much lower than this thread suggests.

Those of us who have worked in the hotel industry and are confirming it's commonplace in almost ALL hotels are highlighting that it happens. But the reality is that it happens to a tiny, tiny percentage of all hotel bookings. So few that it will never impact the vast majority of us. Are we all prepared to pay more money EVERY SINGLE TIME we book a hotel room, in order to prevent a hypothetical scenario which is extremely unlikely to happen - I think not.

Happened to us once. A group of us had booked into same hotel, driving to it after school finished. We had all prepaid, and we were last (also not late, 6pm) and they had over booked and moved us to another Travelodge in next town - 30 minute drive away. We'd purposely booked a restaurant for us all next door to the Travelodge so we could all have a drink and a laugh, but meant I ended up driving. Did 4 hours extra driving that weekend just back and forth. Haven't stayed in one since, completely ruined a fun weekend.

I would rather pay 110 quid to actually reserve a hotel room than 100 quid to think I had reserved one.

Hotel overbooking has only happened to me once before - on honeymoon in the US. But they only moved us next door, threw in free breakfast and upgraded our room to a much better one with seaview and balcony!

If it's as rare as you say, then why not refund the cost of the room when it happens?
Or other compensation?
I got an automatic 'sorry you had to move location - give us some feedback' email from travelodge, and when I completed it asking for a refund, they ignored me. I've since contacted them twice - they are ignoring me. This is obviously not a special case of a rare thing going wrong, where they are bending over backwards to try to put things right for a customer! It feels a lot more like it's fairly typical given the way they are treating me now!

Plus - yes of course I'd rather pay more to actually reserve the room! Travelodge's apparently low prices are misleading if it is not actually a reservation!
I'd like to see it legislated against for sure.
A big part of the problem is that they do not make clear that a reservation is just a sort of bid which might not result in the room that you chose. If they made that clear (I like someone up-thread's idea of a pop up warning!) then I'd have much less of a problem with this.
If you are a fan of capitalism, friend of the businesses, then we need to get it right. Part of the way capitalism was supposed to work and deliver benefits to all was by us all having 'perfect information' so we could choose between options. That's what is missing here! And part of my aim in this thread is to say 'travelodge do this guys! Know what you are buying!'.
If someone wants to prove that the problem is equally spread across all hotel chains, then maybe a FOI request to a range of chains asking for figures about this would be the way forward?

That sounds amazing!

Even a free breakfast (even from travelodge) might have made me feel better about this. As it was I had already paid for something and was given something worse, and as yet I have had no compensation at all. I don't hold out much hope!

FOI only applies to public sector bodies but yes, no harm in contacting hotels before you book asking for their policy on this.

Oh I didn't know that FOI was only for public sector bodies.
I won't be trying to find out this information. I'll just be avoiding travelodge like the plague as that is where my personal experience is of this, and of many others upthread.
I was just saying to anyone who thinks that it is not particularly bad at travelodge, but equally spread across other chains, then I'd not be inclined to believe this unless I see some figures.
As far as I can see other chains are making sure it happens rarely, and compensating guests generously when it does, whereas for travelodge it is just a standard thing that happens often and I can tell you from experience that there is zero compensation or refund when it does! They just blank you! So unbelievably shit. (not the staff - all the staff we talked to were doing their best. I mean the company are shit, and I would strongly advise anyone to avoid them unless they have plenty of time to move around between different hotels.

I actually had no idea that hotels overbook but I did think that if you didn't arrive until later in the evening they'd give your room away, so I prefer not to have evening flights to places and try to arrive shortly after check in time where possible.

The information is shown in their terms and conditions:

You were entitled to a full refund if they did not provide an alternative or you did not accept the alternative.

You are entitled to the reasonable additional costs incurred - your transport etc

https://www.travelodge.co.uk/about/terms-conditions/#arrivaldepartureandrelocation

D. Arrival, departure and relocation

1. You can check in after 3pm on the scheduled date of arrival unless you purchase an early check-in Extra with your booking or directly at the hotel, subject always to availability.
2. You must check-out before midday on the scheduled date of departure unless you purchase a late check-out Extra with your booking or directly at the hotel, subject always to availability. If you do not check out by midday, or the applicable time if you have purchased a late check-out Extra, then we may charge you the Flexible Rate at that time for the applicable room(s) until you check out.
3. For more details on Early In / Late Out click here.
4. We operate a relocation policy. If a room is unavailable on arrival (other than due to an event beyond our reasonable control – see paragraph J6 below) then we agree to either:

A) provide a room, and subject to availability any equivalent Extras which you have booked, in another Travelodge hotel and pay the reasonable cost of transport to that alternative hotel or any applicable car park charges; or B) provide a room in a third party hotel and pay the reasonable cost of transport to that alternative hotel or any applicable car park charges; or C) at your request or, if in our reasonable opinion there is no suitable alternative hotel accommodation available, cancel your booking and refund you any money you have paid in advance for the unavailable room(s) including related food & beverage Extras (all other Extras are non-refundable).

Yes - but just to clarify, I don't think that their putting this in their T&Cs makes it is morally acceptable.
Obviously companies are not generally bothered about being moral. Which is why there should be legislation!
And in this capitalist jungle without this sort of legislation, it's vital that we share information about these companies so we can make choices with our eyes open. Hence my warning: travelodge do this routinely and do not offer you any compensation. To 'reserve' a room in a particular hotel is to pay some money and then they may or may not give you that room.

To be fair OP, you were also not inclined to believe people earlier on in the thread when we said that most hotels do this as well, including independent ones.

It wouldn't be such a small increase though. It would be larger which would basically price poorer people out of accessing budget accommodation.

I made a booking at a Travelodge a few years ago and called it a few days before we were due to arrive only to be told there had been a fire and all bookings had been cancelled and their other hotels in the area were fully booked. I had a friend arriving from overseas and had then to try to find another affordable hotel.
Travelodge didn’t seem to consider it owed me a duty to inform me about the situation, though I’d booked months’ earlier. It was my good fortune I’d called before arriving.

I would rather pay 110 quid to actually reserve a hotel room than 100 quid to think I had reserved one.

Same here. Like anything else, if the price seems suspiciously cheap, you wonder why - and seek an alternative where you will pay more but can know that the seller/supplier is reputable and trustworthy.

It wouldn't be such a small increase though. It would be larger which would basically price poorer people out of accessing budget accommodation.

If that's the realistic price to provide a reliable, honest service, so be it. It's not like many poorer people can afford to stay at hotels anyway - even the so-called budget ones - so it's irrelevant to them anyway.

I'm sure poorer people would rather know at the outset that something is beyond their budget, rather than being led to believe that they can afford it and then completely wasting their money.

What an insensitive post.

What an insensitive post.

Care to elaborate why you think that?

In case you somehow think that I'm othering poorer people, this is something that affects pretty much all of us at some points.

There's loads of stuff that is simply beyond my financial capability too, so I understand that it's not something I could aspire to. I wouldn't be blissfully happy to be told that I could indeed definitely have it at a knockdown price, only to find that I actually couldn't.

Slightly different scenario, but there's a private healthcare company who have me in their sights and keep bombarding me with junk mail, urging me how 'affordable' their services are.

Even if they were properly reasonably-priced for somebody like me, I know full-well that they'd let me go along with applying and then turn me down flat once they learned of my medical circumstances. Oddly enough, that doesn't endear me to them for 'including me' at least at the beginning, when I know it's all just a massive waste of my time.

Because you want to essentially remove all budget hotel options which us poorer people rely on at times. It's very different comparing it with private health care because regardless you get free healthcare on the NHS.

The only reason budget hotels exist is because revenue managers are able to manage their revenue in a way that they do.

Come on, the way you're framing it, you'd think that budget hotels are really cheap - and by them not double-selling those budget rooms, prices would skyrocket.

Budget hotels are still an expensive option that's beyond many people's budgets, just because they may be less expensive than posh places are.

And currently, when hotels give you an option of a fixed, non-refundable price or a flexible one that can be cancelled/changed - of the sort that people on this thread are hailing as making their business so precarious and unprofitable - the latter is always significantly more expensive. Do you really think that poorer people will choose to pay more than they need to for the room?

And if a room has been booked and pre-paid, as per the agreed T&Cs, with no chance of a refund, even if it turns out that the customer can't subsequently use it, there's no risk to the hotel or their income at all; it's just greed.

There is legislation, there are two parts applicable to this:

1. the contract - you booked a room in line with their contract terms (including compensation terms) and they fulfilled their part of the contract by providing an alternative
2. unfair terms - the law protects you from unfair terms (which is a level of morality protection under legislation)

You were offered and accepted alternative accommodation
You are entitled to reasonable compensation for costs & inconvenience both via the terms
of the contract itself and also have the option to pursue legally

Expecting a full refund as well as the alternative accommodation is being unfair on your side

Expecting a full refund as well as the alternative accommodation is being unfair on your side

Except you need somewhere to sleep so there often isn't really an option to turn down the alternative (we did when it almost happened to us and were 'found' the room we booked after all).
All of the people defending the policy have claimed this is due to flexible booking (ours wasn't), that when hotels over book they are constantly making sure that there is space at the nearest hotel in their chain (there wasn't they had to go 30 miles to find us a room) that they are in contact with other chains in the town /area to make sure there is space local (again nope). That is it a risk you take is if check in late (we didn't). We were literally told they didn't have a room for us and then were left sitting in reception for well over an hour without so much as the offer of a cup of tea. If the system worked as it's supporters imply it does and we had arrived to be asked if we would mind transferring to X hotel 2 miles away where a deluxe room and a complimentary meal awaits us it would be a very different story but we were just told there wasn't room for us then they started to try and provide an alternative and found there wasn't one within any sort of reasonable distance.
Fairly often I book hotels in the town of the football team I support because I don't fancy getting up early driving for 5 hours watching a match them starting a 5 hour drive home at gone 5pm. On those occasions I would be fine to be moved because driving for 20 minutes/ half an hour wouldn't be an issue - especially if it meant I got a free meal - but when I've booked a hotel to attend an evening event I want the location I've booked so I don't have to worry about midnight taxis.