HILTON

No oceanview room – and no refund

Jeff Kinsey/Shutterstock
Jeff Kinsey/Shutterstock
Question: I recently booked a hotel room for a three-night stay at the DoubleTree Beach Resort by Hilton Hotel Tampa Bay – North Redington Beach through Expedia. I opted to pay the higher rate of $239 a night to guarantee a beachfront room. The lower rate of $199 was refundable but would not guarantee the oceanview room.

My husband and I decided it was worth the risk of losing our $800 so that we can have the oceanview. This was risky since we have four small children and anything could have happened to force us to cancel our reservation.

When we arrived at the hotel on Friday, March 2nd, they gave me a landview room and told me that Expedia booked me a landview room. I thought once I called Expedia, the issue would be resolved but after an hour on the phone with a supervisor who was extremely rude, I had no such luck.
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72 comments

Are “unpublished” hotel reservations too hard to cancel?

Question: I recently tried to book a four-star hotel in New York through Expedia’s unpublished rates section, which doesn’t reveal the name of the hotel until you pay for it. The hotel we ended up with was DoubleTree by Hilton New York Chelsea, which is only listed as a three-star hotel on other popular websites. I understood before calling that Expedia has a no-cancellation policy on the unpublished hotel rates, but I figured if I called right away I might be lucky enough to get it canceled.
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33 comments

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

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.
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49 comments

A stolen West Point class ring, and all I get from my hotel is an excuse?

There’s been a lot of talk about stolen property in hotels — see last week’s story on the safe removed from a Radisson room — and today’s case presents us with a similar problem.

This time, the pilfered items include a watch and an item with sentimental value: a West Point class ring. But unlike last week’s burglary, which was addressed promptly by the hotel, this one has been dragging on for more than a year without a satisfactory response.

Then again, maybe the response is the best the guest can hope for from the Dallas-area Hilton Garden Inn they were staying at.
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84 comments

Case dismissed: The valet service damaged our rental, but we got the bill

Car rental damage cases are usually disputes between two parties — the renter and the agency. But not always.

Ron Goldstein recently rented a car from Thrifty in Los Angeles. He left the car with a parking valet at the DoubleTree by Hilton Guest Suites Santa Monica. It’s a decent hotel about a block from where the 10 freeway ends, and street parking isn’t really an option.

And then things took a turn for the worse.
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39 comments

Can this trip be saved? “Come to the room, I have an emergency”

Erica Lara and her boyfriend, Patrick, checked into the Hilton Key Largo Grande Resort & Beach Club last Saturday for a wedding, but they didn’t stay long.

Patrick suffered an unfortunate, and extremely painful mishap, and was sent to the hospital. Details on his condition in a moment (warning: if you are in any way squeamish, click away now). The couple want their money back because they didn’t get to use the room.
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91 comments