When people book a room in ahotel, especially way in advance, they reasonably expect to get one upon arriving at said hotel. But that’s not always what happens.
Take thismildly infuriated couple, for instance. They came to the hotel only to learn that it had no room for the guests, despite the fact that they made a reservation weeks ago. They were offered an alternative, however – a sofa bed in a room where you would least expect one to be. Scroll down to find pictures of the couple’s home-away-from-home, as well as more details in the OP’s own words, which she shared with fellow members of the ‘Mildly Infuriating’ community.
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This couple’s hotel didn’t have a room for them, so they were offered an alternative
Image credits:Llebanna
Image source:Llebanna
Overbooking is a common practice in the world of hospitality
Image credits:Andrea Piacquadio / pexels (not the actual photo)
Just likeairlines, hotels, too, tend to overbook sometimes, which can become quite a headache for both the guests and the front desk employees who said guests often let their desperation out on. In the hotel industry, overbooking is a practice of confirming more rooms than the hotel has to offer. Unsurprisingly, that leads to hotel managers having to look for alternative options for their guests—like turning a conference room into a bedroom—or engage in more routine solutions for being overbooked.
One of such routine procedures is a hotel ‘walking’ its guests, meaning, booking them a room in a different hotel. While ‘walking’ is not a recent practice, it tends to be on the rise as hotel occupancy rates increase, The New York Timesreports.
Another hospitality expert, a senior lecturer at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, Reneta McCarthy, told The New York Times that who gets ‘walked’ depends on numerous factors. According to her, men are more likely to be relocated to a different hotel than women, as are solo-travelers compared to couples or families. Those who only have one night reserved are more at risk, too, as aretravelerswho check in late in the day.
In case of overbooking, the hotel might ‘walk’ its guests and provide some sort of compensation
Image credits:Pixabay / pexels (not the actual photo)
The aforementioned source suggests that hotels have two big reasons to overbook: avoiding losing revenue and achieving 100% occupancy. Since cancellations are inevitable, overbooking allows establishments to use every room they have and not lose revenue even if the cancellations are made last-minute. As for the occupancy, such last-minute cancellations and no-shows mean that the hotel will not reach the expected 100% occupancy, despite being fully booked initially, which is not a favorable situation either.
Fellow netizens shared their hotel stories, too, some had seemingly gone through similar situations themselves
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