Unnatural disaster: What to do when your hotel doesn’t have room

Photo of author

By Christopher Elliott

The deadly storms that left large swaths of the East Coast without power just before the Fourth of July holiday provided an uncomfortable lesson to hotel guests like Ken White: Always call to confirm your reservation — especially when the place you’re visiting is reeling from a natural disaster.

White lives in Charlottesville, Va., an area that was hit hard by the hurricane-force winds. Many residents were struggling to stay cool in record-breaking heat. And checking into an air-conditioned hotel nearby was a popular solution.

Maybe a little too popular.

A reservation vanishes

“I made reservations at the Hilton Garden Inn for Sunday and Monday night,” says White, a college marketing professor. “My credit card was charged, and I was given a confirmation number by Expedia.”

When he tried to pick up his room key, a hotel representative said that White didn’t have a reservation. They turned him away. The Hilton, like all the other hotels in the area, was fully booked.

Getting to the bottom of White’s reservation problem was only slightly easier than finding a hotel room in Charlottesville after a power outage, it turns out. For starters, White sent me a complaint and then vanished. Repeated phone calls and e-mails to him went unanswered, which can happen during a popular vacation week — or when portions of Charlottesville remain without electricity for more than a week.

An Expedia spokeswoman said that the online travel agency wouldn’t comment on White’s case unless I provided a confirmation number. I contacted Hilton for a statement, and it, too, refused to say anything at the corporate level, deferring instead to the hotel White had tried to stay in, which it said is a franchise property.

Finally, I reached Eric Pfister, the general manager at the Hilton Garden Inn in Charlottesville. He confirmed the details of White’s story. Pfister said that on Saturday, June 30, in the wake of the massive thunderstorms, his 124-room hotel quickly sold out.

EMBARK Beyond is a luxury travel advisory dedicated to creating thoughtfully designed experiences that go beyond a destination. Focused first on client needs, we have built (and continue to build!) relationships with the world’s most sought-after lifestyle and fashion brands to open the world - beyond imagination - to our clients. Find out more at EMBARK Beyond.

Reservation system glitch creates overbooking nightmare

The Hilton Garden Inn connects to Expedia through an electronic reservations system, and it also receives faxes from the online travel agency as a backup. Hilton’s system was showing the property as fully booked for Sunday and Monday night, but for some reason, Expedia didn’t get the message. It continued to confirm reservations and send backup faxes, which were piling up fast.

“It was a bad situation,” Pfister says.

Hilton tried to contact Expedia, asking it to stop accepting new reservations. Eventually it did, but the hotel had to turn away nine guests the next day, including White.

It’s unclear whether this was an isolated problem or whether other Hilton properties working with Expedia were affected by the reservations system glitch. With this new information from Hilton, I again asked Expedia whether it could help me understand how these surplus reservations happened. It declined to comment.

When a hotel can’t accommodate a guest because it’s overbooked, the standard industry practice is to send that person to a comparable hotel and to pay for the first night’s reservation. That would have happened to White and the other displaced customers, except that there were no available rooms in the region.

Navigating hotel overbooking

In such cases, a hotel’s options are limited, says Stephen Barth. He a professor of hospitality law at the University of Houston and founder of the Web site HospitalityLawyer.com. A property can still accommodate a guest by setting up a rollaway bed in the lobby. Which sometimes happens during a natural disaster. It can also rent rooms in eight-hour shifts. Giving guests a chance to freshen up, or it can allow them to use the showers at the pool.

“Overbookings like this tend to happen at large events, like the Super Bowl or Formula 1,” Barth says. “They’re usually caused by guests overstaying their reservations, but they can also happen after a natural disaster, like a hurricane on an island with a limited number of hotel rooms.” (Related: London hotel takes a hard line on stranded air traveler’s refund request.)

The best way to avoid being turned away, he says, is to take a couple of preventive measures. White could have sidestepped the situation by booking directly through the Hilton Web site or by calling its reservations number. (White’s confirmation contained an Expedia confirmation but didn’t have a corresponding confirmation from Hilton, according to Pfister.)

Also, Barth says, “always contact the hotel and confirm the reservation.” That’s particularly important when you’re booking through a third party, such as an online travel agency. When your stay falls during a major event — a college homecoming, a large convention or even a big storm, all of which can affect hotel occupancy rates — double-checking is a must.

Resolving reservation disasters

Had White called the Hilton Garden Inn, he would have known that he didn’t have a room. And he could have phoned Expedia to re-book him elsewhere or made other plans.

Making matters worse, the hotel doesn’t even know which customers were turned away. Pfister mentions that Expedia didn’t share guests’ names, hindering his ability to apologize and resolve the issue. Which is exactly what he says he wants to do. (Here’s our guide to resolving your consumer problem.)

“We feel bad,” he says. “We don’t like to turn guests away.”

Pfister hopes White and the others without a place to sleep on Sunday night will reach out to him directly. He promises that he’ll do whatever he can to make it up to them.

Photo of author

Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can't. He's the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes three nationally syndicated columns. He also publishes the Elliott Report, a news site for consumers, and Elliott Confidential, a critically acclaimed newsletter about customer service. If you have a consumer problem you can't solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter. He is based in Panamá City.

Related Posts