Discount travel websites can provide amazing discounts, but can also make you a second-class consumer of sorts–particularly in hotels. Jesse learned this the hard way when he booked a stay at a Holiday Inn in a major American city. He tells Consumerist that he reserved his room through Priceline, and called the hotel to make sure that his reservation would include two double beds for the four people traveling. He checked in to find a single queen bed in the room. His mistake? According to the hotel manager, being a “bad customer” who booked through a third-party site.
He writes:
My wife and two of her friends were going to visit some friends in the San Francisco area so we decided to book a room in the city. I booked a room at the Holiday Inn Hotel [in a major city] well in advance of our trip (a month) and contacted the hotel directly RIGHT after I had made the booking. I informed the reservations desk of my reservation, which they found fine. I informed them that I had four adults and wanted to make sure I could have two doubles rather than one queen or king. The reservation person confirmed this with me and everything seemed fine. Fast forward to the vacation. I check in around 6pm (3 hours after the checkin time) without incident. I didn’t triple check for any changes as the staff was dealing with a large tour group and wedding party checking in. I got up to the room to find a single queen bed.
I went back down to front desk and tried to have it sorted out. The front desk said that they couldn’t move us, as they were completely booked. I asked to speak to a manager about it. The long and short of it is that since I had booked through a 3rd party (which Holiday Inn agrees to book to) that I could only make requests and not actual “Guaranteed” bookings. He proceeding to stick to his guns and to semantics and ignore that I had made the bookings and follow up phone call well in advance and the front desk neglected to inform me that I was basically wishing upon a star to get the my requests. Holiday Inn bumps your reservation for other guests that book directly through them. So if you make a booking for a King through Orbitz or Priceline don’t expect anything other than the smallest room. The manager so graciously gave me a rollup to sleep on while the three other people had to share the queen bed.
No offer other than a rollup to try and accommodate. I asked for comped or discounted parking (35 dollars a night). Nope, couldn’t do that. Breakfast voucher nope. I was the bad customer (his words) that booked through priceline instead of holiday inn. I believe it inexcusable that the only other offer he presented was that I cancel and get a refund and try to rebook somewhere else. (7pm on a Saturday.)
I think it’s important to let other consumers know that Holiday Inn’s position with 3rd party bookings is that you can be bumped without notice for a customer who booked through them.
My experience with booking a four-person room through Priceline was flawless, but it was also a few years ago. Have your third-party bookings worked well, or been full of insults and extreme closeness on too-small beds?
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You need to go higher up, and complain to Holiday Inn International. I had a problem with a General Manager at one of the Holiday Inn hotels.
I found the site on the web and lodged a complaint. The idiot GM called me and then threatened that he’d do absolutely nothing now since calling the Home Office generated a charge to the hotel in question. I just reported that call to them as a follow up and I was quickly reimbursed for the night we spent there.
Since I was taken care of, I still book there when I can.
i never knew that being a paying guest makes you a bad customer
or perhaps its a bad hotel and bad management that is paired with priceline
i would’ve given a discounted upgrade (win-win). i’d bet the writer wouldn’t have written to consumerist but instead sung laurels about holiday inn and their service
I’ve found it to be par for the course to be treated as 3rd class titanic passengers for booking online. It’s come down to smoking/non-smoking rooms, too, which is terrible with asthma. Most of the time, i’ve found that if I’m polite, they’re gracious enough to “go out of their way” to accommodate me, but then I’m usually sternly lectured to make sure to book on *their* website next time. Yeah, because I want to pay 3x the price of my hotel room. Thanks, but no thanks.
My mother just stayed at a hotel in the Upper Peninsula of MIchigan. She wanted to book through Priceline ($40 a night), but Priceline couldn’t guarantee a “pet-friendly” room. So she called the hotel directly, and they offered to book her a pet-friendly room at the Priceline rate. This made my mom happy, her dog happy, and the hotel happy because they apparently pay a fee to Priceline for every room booked through them. Lesson learned – never hurts to ask, you could bypass the third party entirely. Not sure if this would work in more urban areas, though…
I have been in hotel management for nearly 10 years now, and have managed everything from economy to 4-star hotels in various cities around the country. At each hotel that I have managed, the policy is the same – guests who book their reservations directly through the hotel (direct call, national reservations line, website, etc.) are guaranteed a specific room type based on the availability when they make the reservation. Third-party guests are given the room type that they requested if it is available.
When you book a room through a third-party site, that company’s system does not audit the hotel’s system to determine availability. You might be booking a 2 double-bed, nonsmoking room when the hotel has been sold out of that room type for days. It is unfortunate, and we don’t like having to put you in a room that does not suit you, but it is how it works none-the-less.
tell the manager you’re going to rearrange the furniture to accommodate your needs… sometimes this gets them to switch it up out of fear that they will need to pay a maid with muscles.
Whenever I book through priceline I get a room with NO view, like a room looking out onto a wall, but really who cares about that. The room has always been satisfactory. If I want to ensure a view, like when I stayed on the beach, I book through that hotel.
When I was traveling recently with a friend, I booked directly through the Holiday Inn website, and arrived there to find there was a convention in town and they had given my room away and put me in a smaller room with a smaller bed. I was pissed. I requested a refund and they refused. So I left, called the CC company and charged back that room, and found another room on the far side of town that met my accommodations. Will never use Holiday Inn again, and I travel a lot.
So, let’s break this down to its very basic parts:
If two customers go into a store, and one is looking at clearance shoes while the other is looking at a similar set full priced, does one customer get better service than the other just because of the price of the shoe?
That’s what I’m hearing from the hotel employees, and I’ve got to say, it’s enough to make me just stop staying at some of these places altogether. I don’t think the hotel should be aware how much you paid; you’re paying to stay with them, and deserve the same level of service regardless of cost. Anything less is utter tripe, and if these hotel employees were treated the same way, they’d freak out just as bad.
I agree with the above poster, carpet bomb the executives. You were in the right on this one.
I travel extensively & always used Priceline to book my rooms. I tried where ever possible to book no less than 4 star accommodations. I would say 90% of the time I was treated like a second class customer. I have had around a dozen hotel managers tell me that I get what ever room they decide to give regardless of my requests. I will quote more than one hotel manager “because the nice rooms were for paying customers”. This is after following the same procedures as the person in this article. Call the next day after a reservation to reserve a king bed, only to get the smallest rooms in the hotel, more often than not the rooms seemed to be the neglected rooms in terms of upkeep, and maintenance. Some recent experiences for me:
4* in Chicago the shower didn’t work at all, and a bit of a mold problem on the bathroom ceiling. (after much complaining the hotel manger made this right)
4* Dallas supposedly the entire hotel had recently been renovated, I was given a room that had not been renovated, and was absolutely disgusting. A complaint to the manger and I get the nice room comment from him.
4* New York – There was actually a moldy substance on the shower head, the shower tub would not drain, the toilet constantly ran, the mirror was cracked. After one full night in the room and hours of complaints the hotel finally moved me to a room that looked as if it was from a different hotel.
I stopped using priceline because of these experiences. I will gladly pay 2x the priceline price to get treated like an actual customer and not some vagrant that asking for a handout from the hotel.
This managers behavior was reprehensible, however….
When shopping for deals online, no matter if a hotel or airline, I will find the price online and then call the place i’m booking with to make the reservation. that way i’ve eliminated the middle man AND get the good price.
That hotel manager chose a very poor defense when dealing with the fact that they screwed up. What a jerky.
Maybe it is a California thing. Same thing happened to us at a Westin near LAX. The first room was dirty and had leftover salad greens decaying in the unplugged refrigerator… The other room didn’t have their Heavenly Bed linens (we had been staying at Westins exclusively at the time, and we had grown accustomed to what seemed to be their standard accommodations in New Jersey and Florida.) The second room was also a “handicap accessible” room with a big shower that flooded the entire bathroom while you showered.
We were there for a week. It took several days of complaining to the front desk, who basically told us the same thing as the article, in so many words. (You booked a “discount” room, and people like you don’t use our services like valet, restaurants, room service, etc. They were very plain about letting us know that we weren’t deserving of their best service.) We had a frequent guest card, and we called corporate. After a few days of calling, we got upgraded to a lovely suite upstairs, still being told that we didn’t deserve it, as we had booked on Priceline.
ok, i have read through every comment in this thread….
as a business traveler, i stay in hotels 3 or 4 nights a week, almost always as a full-priced customer or on a negotiated rate between my company and the hotel chain. i am astounded that people seem to be surprised that they are not given equal treatment when they have booked through a service like priceline or hotwire. you, as a customer, have chosen to take a substantially discounted rate and in return have gotten a room that may have otherwise been unsold. regular or full-priced customers get first pick ALWAYS. this is good business. to expect every wish of yours to be accommodated is unreasonable (however, expecting to be treated politely is ALWAYS reasonable.)
it is clear when using a discounter that you should not expect to get more than you pay for. when i need nothing more than a bed for a night, i will use priceline or hotwire and i expect nothing other than a room in return.
I’ve used Priceline for dozens of trips to varying hotel chains in cities across North America and not once have I ever been treated any different than if I’d paid full-price for the stay.
On two occasions I’ve booked a room for a colleague and myself and found that they had us booked into a room with a single king bed, but both times the hotel staff were more than accommodating in changing the room to two doubles for us.
Yes, the above mentioned is indeed a truth. I recently had a nightmare situation with Hudson Hotel, a Morgan Group i Manhattan. I was told by the 20-something, (poorly trained hospitality representative, obviously they no longer teach that customer satisfaction means something) that Priceline is not the way to go. We were given a horrible room at first. Fortunately we were able to upgrade after a horrendous night and my calling at 6am after literally not sleeping the entire night! But, the hotel rep, informed me that I was unwise to utilize Priceline. Furthermore, she let me know that they were fulfilling legally what it meant by “double occupancy!” Let me just say, a bruised knee later, (that is how small the bathroom was) and a sleepless night, it was not double occupancy by any stretch of the imagination. When I reported to Priceline that the Hudson group was discouraging their patrons from utilizing Priceline, I was suprised to find that it did not bother them that they were losing a frequent customer. In truth, to get 60% off a room, that is suppose to be a bargain price reduction, only to find it is a janitor closet, well, you fill in the rest…It is not what it should be. Now, in defense of Priceline and the many other establishments that we have “named our own price” for, we have had some amazing locations. Like the Royalton in Manhattan, also the Morgan Group. Question is, are you a gambler?