Hotels imitate airlines, force us to book nonrefundable rooms

Here’s a deeply troubling trend: Hotels, eager to lift their historically low earnings, are introducing more “nonrefundable” rates. Guests often have no choice but to pay them.

Reader and travel agent Suzan Alexander has a case-in-point, which I’ll get to it in a moment. Before I do, let me acknowledge that some of you may be uncomfortable with my choice of words. After all, no one is being herded into the hotel lobby at gunpoint.

But how else do you describe these pricing hijinks? This kind of thing has been happening with airlines for years. If you want an affordable ticket, you’re more or less forced to buy a highly-restricted, nonrefundable fare. Otherwise, the price of your ticket doubles or triples.

Here’s what Alexander had to say:

I am an agent who books hotels all over the world and I am noticing more and more hotel chains and individual hotels offering a discounted price for paying in advance. This type of booking does not allow any changes and is non-refundable.

This used to be a bit of a bonus in that you could save a few dollars if you were sure that you would be traveling on the dates booked. However, what I am seeing now is a real difference in price between the pre-paid and flexible rates.

Yesterday, the difference on a room in San Francisco was almost $100 per night! This leads me to believe that the option to be able to cancel 24 hours in advance is slowly disappearing unless you want to spend a lot more money for a room.

Alexander wondered if I had noticed the same thing. I have, but not a $100 price difference. That’s pretty extreme.

She continues:

It seems to me that a hotel room is becoming like a plane ticket — and in some respects worse. You pay now and don’t expect to make any changes should life interfere with your plans. What can one do about this, besides pay a greatly inflated fee for a room or save money on the room and spend the difference on travel insurance! What is going on here?

Well, isn’t this a great deal for hotels? Those that can afford a refundable room — business travelers — will pay top dollar for their accommodations. They may cancel, but assuming most don’t, the company makes lots of money. The rest of us book a room and the hotel gets to keep the money, no matter what happens.

Talk about a win-win.

I think hotels can do better than stealing a page from the airline industry’s playbook. People, this is the hospitality industry!

Guests don’t mind paying different rates for a suite versus an ocean-view room, or getting a discount for booking early. But $100 more per night for the ability to get a refund? Come on. They can do better than that.

(Photo: Prescott/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • alison

    Greyhound has a new scam too. If you book online,and don’t print your ticket yourself,you have to buy a new ticket at the station. Apparently they “can’t” print tickets for you at the station:if you buy online.

  • Chris in NC

    I agree, the trend is towards more “non-refundable” rooms in the last year. I have not seen a $100 price spread between refundable vs non-refundable, but just last week, I saw a $70 difference between “Advance Purchase” ($89) and “Flexible” ($149) rate at a hotel in Asheville, NC. So far, I have been able to avoid hotels that offer non-refundable rates by booking at alternative properties.

    Truth be told, if the price difference became that extreme between flexible and non-changeable rates, I’ll just shift all my business over to Priceline and Hotwire. After all whats the difference? except more savings!

    I don’t mind paying 10-15% more per night for “flexibility” but when it starts getting more than that, I become unhappy. The other issue is that these rates aren’t just non-refundable. In the rate rules they often say “Advance Purchase, fully non-refundable, non-changeable” The non-changeable under any “circumstances” part is what really is unreasonable.

  • Chris in NC

    Before anyone jumps on me, I meant to say $60 instead of $70 price spread. It was a typo!

  • Anne

    It’s interesting that instead of seeing this as a $100 discount for those who are able and willing to plan well in advance with high confidence, it is seen as a $100 surcharge for those that aren’t. I wouldn’t be willing to call the $100 difference a “fee” for flexibility until the rates go up by $100 OR booking pre-paid becomes the standard practice. My hotel has booked 2 prepaid rooms through the new prepaid option. There is a 15-20% discounted rate. During this same 6 month window we booked almost 2000 rooms with our standard cancellation policy. And most of them booked with a 10-15% discount rate. It isn’t fair to compare the heavily discounted prepaid rate to the full rack rate. At least compare it to the other discounts.

  • SirWired

    Hmm… Honestly, I can understand why the airlines offer cheaper tickets that are non-refundable, and the same rationale that applies to the airlines also easily applies to Hotels and Rental Cars.

    No-penalty cancellations have a very real cost to the travel provider, especially last-minute cancellations at a busy provider.

    I think ideally, there would be a sliding scale of cancellation or change penalties, depending on how far in advance the cancel occurs. (Most cruise lines do this…) There is little cost to the travel provider if you change your plans two months in advance. There is a much higher cost if you cancel your trip the day before you are supposed to take it.

    I suspect hotels are doing this to capture some of the bookings for travelers that would otherwise go through Hotwire or Priceline. This way, the hotel can take advantage of the “free money” when the traveler has to change their plans (or no-shows), and they get to cut out the middleman. Really, I can hardly blame them for doing so. We accept these policies as par-for-the-course with Priceline and Hotwire; why should we treat a cut-rate direct booking any differently? As long as the hotel is VERY upfront about the policy, I don’t really have a problem with it.

    Luckily for me, I have access to a corporate contract (with personal travel allowed) that has 6PM same-day hotel cancellations with pretty much every major chain, but of course not everyone does. Maybe this is something AAA and AARP could negotiate for their member rates?

    SirWired

    P.S. I recently had to cancel a trip that involved a PriceLine booking. (It was a spectacular $50 rate at the Hilton Marina Fort Lauderdale… the room usually goes for at least triple the price.) There is absolutely no way on the Priceline website to cancel the booking. I guess they don’t see it as necessary, since you won’t recover any of your money whether you cancel or not.

  • Cassivella

    My travel department booked one of these prepaid rooms through Ramada Inn. I think it saved us about $10 off the normal price of the room (it was in an area where hotel rooms are not going for much to begin with).

    The problem happened when I went to check out. The front desk person confused the booking with the type of booking that happens when you use Expedia and refused to give me a receipt (and argued and generally wasn’t very nice about it).

    I understand that if I do a pre-pay through Expedia or another online company, that I am actually paying Expedia and therefore Expedia is responsible for my receipt. But, in this case, my company paid Ramada. And as I am sure most of you are familiar, with business travel no receipt = no reimbursement for me.

    So, I happened to mention this issue when I filled out the “hey, how did you enjoy your stay” survey I received via email. Astonishingly, the property manager emailed me back almost immediately and apologized for the problem and comped the room for me (I will just mention before someone thinks that I was out for a free room that there were some other issues and the receipt refuser was very confused and angry – she was yelling at me that because I booked through a travel department that the hotel didn’t receive any money for my room so why did I think I should get a receipt – I mean, it was 6am, but even that early in the morning that argument didn’t make sense).

    But, I was really impressed with the property manager’s quick response to my comments. And, since he offered the refund when really all I asked for was a receipt, I will certainly consider staying at his property again.

    With me, I guess it is not really a problem when there are problems with your hotel stay, but it is a big problem when the staff ignores your comments or makes it worse by arguing with you.

    So, moral of the story, if you do go for one of these pre-paid rooms, try to get the receipt when you are making your reservation. If you don’t get one, or if you have a travel department or someone else doing it for you, then try not to let the front desk refuse you a receipt. There is a big difference between booking through Expedia or Priceline and booking a prepaid through the hotel company itself.

  • Traveler who doesn’t prepay

    How about this solution: If you must stay in that particular hotel, book refundable and then cancel just before you arrive. After canceling, you can call back or go online to reserve at the cheaper rate (since you know you are on the way and will use the room) or, just go to the hotel and get the walk-up rate, which is often much cheaper anyway.

  • Ronda Cantin

    to the person who left the comment about Grey Hound. they can too print out tickets. We always buy online and then have it printed at the station. Report your Grey Hound location to the BBB because that location purposly made you pay for a new ticket under false pretences. The other option is to report it to corperate Grey Hound.
    also, on the subject of this article in general, it really doesnt surprise me that hotels are doing this. Its annoying, and really low, but they were going to jump on the bandwagon eventually. I personally think that your far better off being pickier about your tickets. or goin camping :D

  • http://www.scrapbookupdate.com Nancy Nally

    There is a difference between the airline and hotel practices as far as I can tell when I’ve encountered them, and that difference is very key: an airline will let you change the date on a “non-refundable” ticket by paying a hefty change fee. So you can usually salvage at least some value back out of it if you have to make a change. But the hotels as far as I can tell when I’ve seen those rates want to keep all your money no matter what, with no “rescheduling” allowed.

    Basically, when I am booking travel for my occasional business trips, my airfare is almost always under $300 and I am really only risking $150 of that in a change fee. My hotel is frequently at least twice that – and if I booked a non-refundable room I’d be risking all of it. I think that is a bit much for hotels to ask.

  • Carrie Charney

    In the present economy, I’m finding that hotel rates are going down as my trips approach. Therefore, I’ll reserve a non-prepaid room and then change later as the price goes down. I do hope the economy changes though, for everyone’s sake, even at a disadvantage to me.

  • http://mccallumsolutions.com Tom McCallum

    Non-refundable rates have been out there for years, started by Expedia and the other OTAs. In recent years, with hotel sites giving best rate guarantees, they’ve also increasingly added the non-refundable “internet only” rates to their sites too.

    In short.. nothing new.. but will the rate difference increase ? I think the hotel industry will try a whole lot of tricks in 2010 and see what works, this certainly may be one of them.. time will tell.

    One that IS certainly happening that I see in the Caribbean is some serious “bait and switch” for beachfront rooms. I recently blogged about this for a client, theReef in Cayman (http://bit.ly/7oaSuC), referencing how TravelZoo is even encouraging hotels to “bait and switch”.

    The game is simple.. offer a low headline rate, but then split out as many fees, surcharges as possible that get added to that rate.. then charge a big fee to upgrade from “car park” view to beachfront.

    Just yesterday, for example, Atlantis eblasted an early booking deal, but the small print noted up to $109 in nightly charges for gratuities, utility / service charges.. and no doubt a whole bunch of other spurious charges.

    In closing.. as to the hotels copying the airlines on non-refundable rates.. looks like that is not the only thing.. remember when airlines did the same thing with the cheap headline rate and then tacked on all the charges in the small print ? Seems the hotel industry needs to learn what the airlines did, that this just upsets the customer…. the low cost airlines worked it out first, then even the likes of BA had to follow suit, with their fares now including ALL taxes and charges (at least for UK originating fares)

    May we live in interesting times !

  • David Young

    We got around this at the Palais de la Mediteranee in Nice (France) by booking through American Express Platinum Travel. We got the “non-refundable” rate of euro 189,00 wtih a 48-hour cancellation option. Apparently American Express has the pull to force hotels to provide this option even on the cheapest rates.

  • Chris in NC

    @ Anne,

    The scenario that I posted $89 (non-refundable) vs $149 is the discounted rate, not the “rack rate” which was $199. I also believe that Starwood offered 50% off weekend rates, that were non-refundable, non-changeable, etc. I saw weekend rates at the Sheraton New Orleans for $79, JW Marriott New Orleans for $89, etc this fall. These rates were being offered THROUGH THE HOTEL, not via Priceline, Hotwire or a 3rd party site. For those who know that market, those are significant discounts. Of course, the rates all came with the same caveat (non-refundable, non-changeable).

    My beef with non-refundable and non-changeable fares is that many travellers will book these fares and then when something comes up, gripe, whine and complain (often resorting to consumer advocacy sites like Chris Elliott) to get their way. (like the OP that booked a room at the Virgina Beach Hilton for 2 nights, then wanted to change it to 2 rooms for 1 night). One can make the argument that there is no “cost” to the hotels to offer flexibility, but it sure does penalize those of us who choose not to book non-refundable rooms expecting that everyone follows the rules.

    I think my view would change if the hotels offered IN WRITING a little flexibility. Instead of being non-changeable, allow us to roll the deposit into a higher priced room if there was a travel emergency. That is a fair compromise. Booking a non-refundable room is an unacceptable risk for ALL travellers (whether they realize it or not), after all there are too many variables (like the Northeast snowstorm for example). Sure, hotels have been known to waive rules, but some do and some don’t.

    If hotels get too greedy and make all “discounted” rooms non-refundable and non-changeable, then I see no downside to using Priceline and Hotwire. None at all. Both are non-refundable and non-changeable. So, hotels need to beware, they may get more than they bargain for!

    Yes, I have booked non-refundable rooms, and I know the risk. Often I will book it via a iPhone when I am 10 minutes away. However, even now, some chains are requiring 14 day advance reservation.

    Sigh!
    My

  • Noah

    The travel industry is among the only industries where there is such things as a “refundable” deal. If I make a contract to buy 100 widgets, and later decide I don’t want to buy any widgets, or only want 20 widgets, I generally have to pay for them (unless I can show that the widget seller was able to sell those same 100, or 80, widgets to somebody else).

    I’m not saying that it makes sense for the travel industry to work this way, but it’s certainly not a crazy idea that you’d have to pay more if the provider faces the uncertainty of losing your business.

  • Carver

    The naysayers have completely missed the point. Why would you book a non-refundable rate unless it was at a substantial discount?

    I have a reservation at the LA Marriott in a week. The fully refundable rate is $129 which includes internet. The discounted, non-refundable, pre-paid rate is $109. I am certainly not going to lose all flexibility for $10 (internet is the other $10).

    By comparison, I was at the Westin Bonaventure in LA. The discounted rate was $99. The regular rate was $179. I booked the $99 and took a chance.

    But if we must talk in terms of discount vs surcharges (a false dichotomy crated by marketing), we would ask, which rate, the refundable or non-refundable one, is consistent with similarly situated properties, and use that as a baseline.

    If the refundable rate is the average rate, then the non-refundable rate is a discount. If the non-refundable rate is average rate, then the refundable rate is a surcharge.

  • Steve

    Cassivella, that’s very interesting. I had something similar happen to me at a Hilton Garden Inn where I had booked a prepaid room through Hilton’s website. The desk clerk told me I couldn’t get a receipt because I had prepaid. I didn’t push the issue because I didn’t really NEED a receipt (it was personal travel, not business) but now that I think about it again it’s an absolutely ridiculous policy. If it happens to me again, I’ll dig in my heels.

    “If the refundable rate is the average rate, then the non-refundable rate is a discount. If the non-refundable rate is average rate, then the refundable rate is a surcharge.”

    Very true, Carver. I think what Chris is suggesting is that the trend is pointing toward the latter, as with the airlines, and that’s troubling (and I’d agree).

    Personally, I haven’t seen a big spread between rates at hotels I’ve looked at. They’ve been more in the $10-20 range depending on starting price. I always book nonrefundable if the trip is a short time away and take the chance. IMHO, even $10 is not insignificant if it represents a 10%+ discount…and if I’m booking travel for within the next month, the chances I’ll cancel are very low.

  • Carver

    @Chris in NC

    I agree with you that there should be some leeway in a nunrefundable rate. Death, illness, inaccesibility, jury duty are some exceptions that come to mind that should permit a change as a matter of right. Beyond that its up to the individual hotel to decide on a case by case basis whether to make a change.

    I don’t believe that its unethical or improper to ask for a courtesy. If I spend tons of money at your establishment, I expect some reciprocity. Otherwise, I should spend my money at an establishment where it is appreciated.

    I disagree though about non-refundable rates being equal to priceline and hotwire. Booking a non-refundable rate doesn’t make you a second class guest.

  • Jeanne in NE

    Carver’s analysis is the best write-up of how I go about booking hotel/motel rates online. I don’t use Priceline or Hotwire, because I want to know what I’m getting in advance; that’s my comfort zone. $10 difference? No big deal. Big difference in price – I look to see if the lower, non-refundable number is something I can give up if something occurs.

    BTW, speaking of “if something occurs” – I ended up not making travel plans over winter break because of having to care for my mother after her surgery. Luckily I didn’t have to cancel any plans, because I found out in advance – this time. I’ve found trip insurance that covers cancellation of a trip if my mother were to have died, but not for having to do post-surgical care. Are there any such policies out there?

  • Robert

    There’s a big difference between the situation where airlines are the only ones to routinely make changes or cancellations prohibitively expensive, and the situation where all travel providers (hotels, bus, car rental, etc.) start to do so. Let’s say you reserve an airplane ticket, and then a hotel and rental car connected to that. Then, a month in advance of your trip, your airline lets you know that the flight that day has been cancelled and says that you have to fly the following day. In the old days of typically flexible hotel and car reservations, no problem; in this brave new world, you might be out a couple hundred bucks, with no recourse, as the airline will disclaim all responsibility for your ground arrangements.

    I think this kind of situation is getting more common (it happened to me recently). If every provider moves to the nonrefundable model, it could get to the point where people won’t put up with it any more. It may be that the nonrefundable model is in travel service providers’ interest only so long as only some providers use it. That’s a recipe for instability.

  • Gerry

    The hotels are not just following in the steps of the airlines; what they’re doing is much worse. You mostly know what you’re getting when you book air travel, and even if you don’t, a flight doesn’t last very long, so if you think you can make your flight, it makes sense to use a non-refundable fare. But when you book a hotel, you never really know what you’re getting, and you’re in it for the long haul.

    There isn’t much difference between one economy class airline seat and another, but there are huge differences between the quality of hotel rooms, even in a single chain. A week in a room with a veranda looking out over the ocean is a very different experience from a week looking out a dingy window at a stagnant lagoon, yet both hotels are likely to advertise their “waterfront rooms.” I may discover that I’ve agreed to stay in a hotel that doesn’t look at all like the online photos, that has dirty rooms, and where the amenities listed on the website are all closed for maintenance. Now what? The hotel will fight tooth and nail to keep my money, and my dissatisfaction isn’t much of an argument for a refund. I got a room didn’t I?

    I flew 50-60 times a year for 10 years on prepaid fares with few problems. The four times I bought prepaid hotel rooms were all disasters. Once, at the last minute, my company sent me to a different location than the one at which I had booked a prepaid room. I was able to change my air tickets for a fee, but the hotel room was a total loss. Once I booked on Priceline and got a hotel on the far side of an uncrossable freeway from my worksite, even though the hotel’s location was supposedly outside the geographic region I specified. Renting a car more than wiped out any savings. Once a customer booked a room for me on Priceline at a hotel with a severe bedbug infestation (if nothing else, the resurgence of bedbugs argues against ever using Hotwire or Priceline. You MUST be able to check the hotel for bedbug reports on bedbugregistry.com before you pay.) Once on vacation, my prepaid room was tiny, shabby, and next to the elevators, and naturally, there were no other rooms available. I couldn’t sleep for the humming and dinging. That was the last time I prepaid for a room.

    I have cut back my travel to a few times a year, and I use conference calls and web conferencing instead. I find my customers are eager to embrace the no-business-travel choice, in fact, some major corporations with whom I do business claim to have cut back their travel budgets by 50% or more. I didn’t quit traveling because travel cost too much. I quit traveling because I was sick to death of being treated as a commodity from which the utmost value had to be extracted by the travel industry, and I quit traveling because of the hypervigilance and research required to avoid being screwed. Everything I’m hearing about prepaid, non-refundable hotel rooms makes me think I did the right thing.

    I still travel for vacations. We don’t -ever- prepay, and we don’t stay at hotels that charge outrageous premiums for refundable rooms. In fact, we don’t stay at hotels much any more. We’re now more likely to pitch our tent in a national forest in Australia than to book a room in San Francisco. The difference in price gets applied to an airfare to a more exotic location, the service is as good as we make it, and I’m not constantly checking my wallet to see if the wombats have cleverly extracted a fee or a surcharge when I wasn’t looking.

    Gerry

  • Cassivella

    I was just remembering the last (and it will be the absolute last) time I used Expedia to book a pre-paid hotel room. I found out when I arrived to check in that I needed to spend an extra night at the hotel. The hotel had plenty of rooms available in my type.

    But, for some reason, it took an hour-long three-way conference call between me, the hotel manager, and Expedia in order to extend my pre-paid reservation by one night. It was fascinating that neither Expedia nor the hotel seemed to want my extra $160.

  • carver

    I think it is way too early to be sounding the alarm. I make hotel reservations all the time. Sure, there is a non-refundable option, but at the same time, there are numerous fully refundable options which are priced competitively.

    And this isn’t new. Starwood for example has run a “promotion” for years giving between 25 to 33 percent off by booking a nonrefundable, fully prepaid room for 3 or more days.

    Personally, I think this is much ado about nothing.

  • Ira Rosen

    I must agree with “carver” as far as Starwoods is concerned. I’ve seen the non-refundable Internet rates on their properties, and have been able to book those rates, or some only sightly higher, as refundable, by calling Starwoods directly.

    It seems to me that all the hotel chains are doing is creating a product to be competitive with Hotwire or Priceline, but removing the middleman (and the property opaqueness). No problem as far as I’m concerned.

  • David Z

    Sorry, Chris. No one’s being held at gunpoint to book nonrefundable, lower-priced rooms as you yourself acknowledged, especially when other options exist.

    And ditto with Carver: much ado about nothing. Sure one can blog whatever they feel like, but it doesn’t necessarily make something true unless maybe “tangibly” backed up by something we all can pretty much agree with.

    Pretty much, anyway.

  • Jacob News

    I had an experience at a Hilton hotel where I had prepaid for a room for multiple days, and housekeeping skipped our room. I’m a very non-confrontational person, and I make very humble and modest requests. When we asked the front desk if they could send housekeeping to swap out our towels, we were told that because we pre-paid, they already had our money and would do absolutely nothing for us, and if we didn’t like it, we could lump it.

    We told the manager at checkout about our experience, and she shrugged and said because we pre-paid there was nothing she could do. I was invited to fill out the internet survey after our stay, but I never heard a peep back from them.

    I had been staying at that particular hotel many times over many years, and always been very happy, but after one experience like that, I realized the economic value of being disloyal and shopping around.

  • Jacob News

    Please note that in my prior note, I never asked them at any time for a discount. I had only ever asked for clean towels. It was their implication that because I could not recover any money due to dissatisfaction, that I wasn’t in a position to be asking them for anything. I’ll never pre-pay for a room again!

  • Carver

    @Jacob

    I’m speechless. And that doesn’t happen very often. :)

    Did you book via Priceline/Hotwire? The front desk’s response make no sense whatsoever, not even a little. Assuming that your post is mostly accurate, I have to believe that that is a problem with the hotel more than anything.

    I’ve had housekeeping miss my room on occassion. I’ve never seen the front desk look at my reservation. They just call housekeeping and say, so and so room needs to be cleaned.

    My strong suspicion is that the hotel is going through some drama whether its new management/ownership, financial crisis, something.

  • Connie – Travel Consultant

    Sometimes the “non-refundable” amount is only for the first night – not the entire stay. It pays to check. Secondly, travel insurance may be purchased that will reimburse you for penalties if you have to cancel hotel, air tickets, cruises, tours, etc. It will cover you for a lot of other contingencies while traveling, as well.

  • Kevin M

    Carver: I’d agree with the “much ado about nothing” evaluation, except that the question being raised is, is this a growing trend that may affect most of us someday?

    I think your earlier point (if the refundable rate is the average “going” rate, then prepaid rates are a discount) hits the nail on the head, but the spice in the stew is what’s been happening to the travel industry over the last year or so, especially hotels. Even as the economy started to teeter a couple of years ago, hotels were still rushing to build more and more rooms, and there’s a huge oversupply in many markets (as evidenced by the growing number of hotel properties in bankruptcy, foreclosure, or just plain abandoned to the lenders.

    In times like these, it’s hard to tell what the market rate “should” be. Are hotels offering the lower-priced options that the economy says are the rational prices to be offered, but with enough “prepay” strings newly attached that unused noncancellable bookings offset the “rational” price? Are the “refundable” rates artificially higher than they should otherwise be, due to the presence of this “nonrefundable” prepaid rate?

    One thing I will say – there’s a huge barrier to entry in the airline business (namely, the capital required), and some of the airlines do everything they can to avoid competition. Given the comparatively paltry amount, however, needed to build a small hotel, and the ease of which hotels can switch flags, and I don’t see too many traveler-unfriendly policies getting hold in the industry. It’s just too easy for one player to upset the applecart.

  • Jacob News

    @Carver: I had not used a travel agent website; I booked directly through Hilton’s first party website (www.hilton.com) and had selected their “online only special — prepaid, non-refundable” rate, I even filled out Hilton’s first-party web survey after my visit, telling them what happened, so I was doubly disappointed when I never received even such as an email after that.

    But I did learn the lesson discussed by the article — don’t give hotels your money before services are rendered, or you lose your bargaining position!

  • Arizona Road Warrior

    As a person that spends 100+ nights in hotels a year and generally stay at the same hotels, I have seen room rates went up 50% to 100% over the past three to five years. Now that we are in a recession and hotel vacancy is at a high level, the hotels are looking for ways to increase their revenues. In the past year or so, I have seen an increase in the number of hotels that are changing their cancellation policy from “6:00 PM on the day of arrival” to 24 hours in advance.

    I try to pick hotels with cancellation policy of “6:00 PM on the day of arrival” because things can happen like a metting running over, a meeting being postponed, something more urgent or important came up at another client in a nearby clity and etc.

    Also, I have noticed that the discount for pre-pay\payment in advance\etc isn’t that great. Most of the discounts I have seen are in the $ 10 to $ 20 a night range which is not enough of a discount for me to purchase one.

  • Carver

    @Jacob

    I don’t see that the prepaid reservation is the problem. When you check into a hotel they run an authorization for the entire stay plus incidentals. So in effect they have your money regardless.

    I am doubly surprised that in filling out the guest survey nothing happened. I recently gave a scathing review to a certain Hilton property. A few days later I got a call from the General Manager who told me that Hilton takes these very seriously and we worked out the issue. But apparantly Corporate had gotten ahold of my review.

  • Suzanne

    Hotels did not offer rates like this until companies like Hotwire.com and Priceline.com came along. Hotels have simply reacted, and adjusted to compete with companies with business models like this. If those companies didn’t create this space (full prepayment/non-refundable), would hotels have started to offer a pricing model like this all on their own? Maybe…maybe not. Blame the Priceline.coms and Hotwire.coms of the world – not the actual hotels.

  • Lisa

    HELP! I just book what I Knew was a non-refundable hotel room in Pittsburgh for July 27th, one night. The charge is $216. Now I do not NEED to be in Pittsburgh that day and will likely lose $216.

    HOWEVER, what happened to the consumer LAW that says you have three days to cancel a transaction. I KNOW there is one, ie., signing up to get new windows, whatever, phone service, and having 72 hours to cancel with no penalty. Certainly this has to apply to my situation. Any ideas what I can do? THANKS!