Raffles

Probably. But only because the hotels will panic and pull their rooms from the 3rd party sites, which is any event is presumably a breach of their contract with IHG anyway.

The hotel will be footing the bill for the first night, I am pretty sure, as its 'fine' for breaking the rules.

3544quebec

No confirmations received - once I get the email from IHG agreeing to my claim I'm quite happy to wait a week or two for the changes to filter through.
One of the 3 IC Budapest reservations has been altered as I can't open the reservation online. This usually means the hotel has changed something in the booking.

blindman

Thanks^

.I noticed that after my success the 3rd party site no longer had ANY IHG properties, when before it had all the brands.

hann

You can see the details of your reservations on the mobile website, as described by Flamewing:

How to reveal all reservation modifications induced by the hotels

tangey

Well it is a deal killer if the coupons are widely available and makes the ICH deal more expensive than the 3rd party deal.ICH doesn't get the booking, and does not have a price match to deal with.

I have little experience of other brands, however I'm not disagreeing than many brands operate similarly, I'm saying its done for the specific reason of invalidating claims. From my research (which included looking at virtually all the 3rd party sites over a period of a few months for comparative booking), it seemed clear to me that many of them were operating a principle wherby the rate BEFORE tax was slightly more expensive, and the rate after tax was cheaper. Clearly their "tax" was not a government tax, and much of the real tax was included in the base rate. I came to the conclusion that this was not by accident, and was mandated by ICH to the 3rd party site (who are probably not alone in doing this, but they were the only brand I was interested in). "you must not undercut us on the rate before tax." It is consistent with the above that, unless things have changed, I could never get the ICH website to give me a "rate" after tax, it is either a rate before tax, or a total price for the stay. To be fair I was not looking at single night bookings, but one wonders do they even consider the "total price" for the stay to be a tax inclusive rate on a single night booking ?

For example, I ultimately did a non-refundable booking with hotels.com, for 4 nights. The nightly rate before tax was more expensive (making it in-eligible for the ICH guarantee), but the overall rate was about $20 a night cheaper.
On top of that, I had a 10% discount code. The method of making the pre-tax rate more expensive, and also having highly publised "vouchers", allows 3rd party sites to sell rooms that are significantly cheaper than what can be had on the ICH site, without allowing the ICH guarantee to be invoked.

Indeed, when you think about it, all any 3rd party site has to do is have a x% discount that kicks in on the bottom line for everyone. Because it is not applied to the top line base rate, it will always make it fail the price match guarantee.

Indeed, which also allows them yet another get out, "you can be as cheap as you like against us, but if you are, do not have a non-refundable rate", as it appears from the T&C, that you need to be comparing prices for bookings that have similar conditions i.e. non-refundable Vs non-refundable.

There was also another way out of the guarantee, that I forgot at the time of my original posting. Many of 3rd part sites had such things as $100 value vouchers for the hotel, $20 of dinner, $10 drinks voucher etc (I was looking at Las Vegas hotels). ICH rates don't include these vouchers. One assumes this makes the rates different from the standard non-refundable ICH rate....so another FAIL.

around 80% of the 3rd party sites I looked at were at most times going to charge me less money to stay in my hotel of choice than ICH was. The fact that all of those bookings would not have met the required T&C of the lowest price guarantee is a) not a coincidence, and b) makes a mockery of the headline "find the best prices for our hotels on our website, or your first night is free". (that wasn't the line used when I was researching, but the principle still applys).

3544quebec

Thanks but as far as I can tell www.priorityclub.com/mobile doesn't show the rate -helpfully it shows valet parking fees but not room rates.

eg


Room and Rate Information
Room Type: 1 KING BED CLUB SUITE OCEAN VIEW 3 PERSON(S) PER ROOM MAXIMUM
Smoking Preference: Smoking
Rate Type: Workshop ICEF
Rate Description:
Daily Valet Parking Fee: $25.00 (USD)

ktremor

Thanks IHG for creating another game for me to play

I racked up a lot of free nights under the Wyndham BRG promotion.

Goonerfish

just had a confirmation email form the BRG team that my one night reservation at the CP London St James is complimentary but they then say EXCLUDING taxes...Is this right?...cant see this in the terms and conditions but it does say "The Guarantee applies to room rate and extra person fees only. Other fees or charges do not apply." I assumed this is referring to the actual comparison and not the free night?

I now cant view the reservation on PC so I went into the mobile site and interestingly enough for the first time ive ever seen it comes up with an error when clicking into the reservation.

blindman

What was the 3rd Party comparison site that had lower rates?

I need a cheap night in London

asmallworld

Im a bit confused and hope to get this right.. from the TAC I read that the BRG must be for the same room type, dates, property.

This means I can do the following BRG right

150 USD Standard Room IHG -> 140 USD Standard Room 3rd Party
250 USD Executive Room IHG -> 240 USD Executive Room 3rd Party
550 USD Suite IHG -> 540 USD Suite 3rd Party

In all cases the first night would be free right?

If I find a rate on a 3rd party site with breakfast.. then I can book the non refundable breakfast rate on IHG as well right?

Thanks for you insight and patience

Goonerfish

thats seems fine ... as long as the 2 rates are either refundable or nnon refundable as you cant compare refundable against non refundable and vice versa.

I'm waiting to find out about the tax element so bear in mind until this is confirmed you may have to pay taxes on whatever price the room is at.

mnredfox

Now I know if I ever want to introduce something like this, I'll introduce the "idea" on FT prior to launching.

NJUPINTHEAIR

To summarize:

It seems that Quebec was providing IHG with rates that were refundable even though on IHG.com had lowere non-refundable rates. Quebec's submission was accepted as he had found a lower refundable rate on a 3rd party site and IHG did not require him to use the apparently lower priced non-refundable rate on IHG.com when making the comparison.

However, Blindman reports that IHG would not permit him to match a refundable rate on IHG.com with a 3rd party site when there was a lower non-refundable rate on IHG.com. Nevertheless, when he found a lower non-refundable rate on a 3rd party site, IHG.com made him first edit his IHG.com rate to one that was non-refundable and then they matched the lower non-refundable 3rd party rate.

Is this correct, folks?

If so, there already appears to be an inconsistency regarding the matching the lowest rate available on IHG.com.

All agree?

PS -- Goonerfish -- I don't know the particulars of your match -- was there a lower non-refundable rate on IHG.com?

blindman

I think the key T&C is that

Another T&C that IHG seem to work to their advantage is

Unless of course THEIR non refundable rate is lower than the 3rd party refundable one!

htb

People have reported this in the past with the old guarantee as well. Hopefully they will keep doing this.

HTB.