Need

Hehe OP has an review of the hotel on tripadvisor with 284 helpful votes. I just added mine. Although 3 stars is way too high I think...

Also interesting to note that General Manager Scott W. responded to an review just yesterday. So was he the one walked out of the job a week ago?

pinniped

If that person is there (e.g., didn't actually walk out ) and convenient for me to talk to, then great.

Otherwise, my relationship is really with corporate and that's probably where I'd be looking for any kind of issue resolution after I've left the property.

CJKatl

I got earfuls about her previous rude behavior and incompetence. She has had numerous "training opportunities." You have to wonder how many people just took her attitude and said nothing.

The other employees were terrific. The first other person to show up immediately took care of the issue, over the first clerk's objections. ("Do you want me to walk the people who called over the phone?") In the morning, nobody had anything positive to say about her, and they were each apologetic for her actions. ("Please do not let this stop you from staying with us again.")

A Hilton Representative has reached out. He/She now has the confirmation number and the employee's name.

The hotel is presently without a GM. The hotel is managed by General Properties of Indiana. I did email them.

BearX220

You did the right thing to escalate this. This is the level of incident over which a hotel can lose its franchise agreement. The (apparently suboptimal) mental health of the desk clerk is not the point. The point is that some manager, somewhere, created the circumstances for this terrible service experience.

How many innocent Hamptons are losing bookings right now because this story is circulating? Too many. Hilton has to perform outlier-superior service recovery here.

Points Scrounger

In that case, the franchise owner needs to fire her directly.

PayItForward

Yes. This is not the (Hampton) norm and her behaviour should not be allowed to tarnish those of her colleagues and the other properties. She certainly seems to need some serious re-training or shown the door if called for.

IAHtraveler

It's been a bit of time, but I've stayed at that property many times, including late arrivals on full nights. Never had any issues there. Definitely agree that the franchise owner needs to terminate the employee, or whoever "trained her on the Hampton way".

pinniped

The reference to these mysterious phone bookings is unusual. I think we all agree that the booking method is irrelevant* to who gets walked in an oversell situation. However, I think of the primary use case for making a phone reservation in 2015 for a simple Hampton Inn type place - you're actually driving, en route to the hotel, and are calling places a few highway exits ahead looking for rooms.

Why would these people be offered rooms to begin with if the hotel was already in an oversold situation?

When was the last time you actually phoned a Hampton Inn weeks ahead of your stay to make a booking?



*Within the scope of HHonors.com, the mobile app, a direct phone call to the property, a phone call to HH central reservations, or a regular/corporate rate booked through a major corporate travel portal. Whether hotels actively pick out the Priceline type bookings to get walked first, I don't know.

Need

I wonder if this has something to do with Hilton's website problem with Hampton Inn. I think there is another thread saying that at one point you can't book any room online in any Hampton Inns. Maybe the hotel happened to take all kinds of phone bookings and wrote them down manually. But when the computer went back up and bunch of people booked online, now the hotel is overbooked. So the hotel is treating the phone bookings as priority because they booked first...and the computer ones as mistakes...

CJKatl

It likely did have to do with the outage. I tried to make a reservation earlier in the day, got the error message online and called the hotel. The desk clerk, whom I met the next day and remembered talking with me, told me they had plenty of rooms and I should just keep trying online throughout the day until the system was fixed. I did this, and eventually was able to book my room. Their policy when I called was to NOT take phone reservations, and I did what the clerk told me to do. Even if they started taking phone reservations, which they should not have done if they were telling others to use the Internet, that's no reason to not honor confirmed online reservations. At a minimum, they should have treated it as a walk, not as the customer's problem. The disturbing part of this is how the hotel clerk seemed to think she could just act like the reservation did not exist.

Just having me show up to tell me I didn't have a reservation is beyond the pale. She had my contact information and could have reached out ahead of time. Heck, the Fairfield Inn in Longview TX called me ahead of time to warn me the pool is out and there will be construction during the day. That seems inconsequential compared to my reservation not being honored, yet it warranted a warning call.

Again, I understand overbooking can happen, in this case from the online system going down earlier in the day. My objection is to the way it was handled. The online issue is Hilton's issue, not the customer's issue. Hilton and its employees need to correct their mistake, not act like their mistake is the customer's issue. In this instance, everyone seemed to be doing that, with the exception of this very cold, rude desk clerk, who kept insisting it wasn't her job or her problem.

BearX220

Surprise: hotels routinely oversell, and keep taking walk-ins even when the house is "sold out," in order to fill the place on the (generally justified) assumption that some res holders won't show up. It's an airline-like oversell practice, except the airlines have pretty good actuarial data telling them how far to oversell; analogous judgments at hotels run on gut, more or less, and depend on malleable factors like weather, big football game in town, etc.

With adroit overselling a hotel can sell more rooms than it has rooms, if you know what I mean -- keep the no-shows' money after 600pm, take cash from walk-ins, and essentially get revenue twice for the same room-night. But the property is always playing with fire.

It is a judgment call that a phone res made by a guy 20 minutes up the Interstate is more likely to turn up than the holder of a web res made weeks ago. Bird in the hand beats two in the bush. All hotels play this game, but hardly any do it as clumsily and stupidly as this particular Hampton.

The wayward clerk probably observed this gut-call oversell practice in the past and took matters into her own hands now that the place is GM-less. But she didn't get to the part of the employee manual about how to treat walked guests. You don't get to laugh in their face and stalk off. Big repercussions ensue.

Um, no, I don't think so.

RogerD408

Yes, you were wronged. What happened should NEVER happen. Reporting the situation was appropriate. Unfortunately there are going to be mistakes made. It's recovery that really counts. Sounds like you were lucky finding another FDC to process your check-in.

There are some that would have just let it slide and then vow to never stay there (or with the chain) ever again. There are some that will escalate the issue to get it resolved. Glad you're one of the latter. This helps everyone.

sethb

Had they tried that with me, my first phone call might have been to Amex about their guarantee for an Amex Assured Reservation. I've seen them yank the ability to take Amex from hotels for failing to honor reservations.

Jimgotkp

I hope you found a place to stay for the night, OP. Definitely a situation where you were walked but the FD agent was too lazy to find another place for you.

RogerD408

OP was accommodated at the property. What the agent attempted was to deny the reservation altogether, no walk. I'm sure there would have been no reimbursement, points, or anything as defined by the walk policy.

It's been reported. It sounds like it was a known problem with the FDC. Hopefully they will take action (unless she is the daughter of the owners).