Originally Posted by RichardKopf

I don't agree. It doesn't matter what caused the outage. if you pay for something and don't receive it, you are entitled to a refund. I assume most countries' laws would agree. It may not be the hotel's fault, but it is their problem. Of course, there are always exceptions

I once had an outage in my room while I was sleeping. I sleep with a CPAP, which makes electricity quite important.. I woke in a sweat and went to find out what was happening. At 2.30am, the hotel was unable or unprepared to move me to another room and thought it appropriate to send an engineer to fix things, which took 45 mins. The engineer then blamed me for the outage, because I had left my laptop plugged in, all night. A letter to the Ops Mgr and a meeting the next day...I left it to him to decide the right avenue, which turned out to be a comp'ed night - the only fair option.

Again, you contracted to have the enjoyment of a room for the night. If it is not possible to provide that, it is not possible to charge for it. The laws of the land where the property is situated may override this common sense issue.