Originally Posted by
walkertalk322
I had a similar experience recently, where IHG NY cancelled my award booking the day of the stay. When I tried checking in at 9pm I was told that it was not a guaranteed reservation and the hotel has the right to cancel it. Is this true?
It was a very frustrating experience and after back and forth with the manager they eventually agreed to reinstate it....
I suspect room not actually cancelled, but instead once hotel allocated all their base cat rooms to guests you checkin night, then put you down in their system as a noshow, intending to refund your rooms nnK points and charge you an 'on the day flex rate' to your CC .
Congrats on standing your ground, if you simply left believing room actually cancelled as against for noshowing, hotel back office would 50/50 have still processed you as no-show, and you'd have no proof you actually tried to checkin.
Award night is guaranteed under IHG t+c's to same extent as a 'flex rate' paid booking. Late arrival needs to be guaranteed by Credit/Debit card. Then if you don't appear, rate in award night points get returned and you are charged the paid rate, ie current full flex paid rate for that missed first night.
Award nights book into entry level room, so maybe hotel duty manager allocated his hotels last base/base+1 level rooms early evening as you had not yet arrived, only had a few higher cat rooms left and didn't want to give you foc upgrade on award.
o > 95% occupancy no need to cancel award nights as hotel gets paid in full (ADR nor the pittance) though most hotels oversell base rooms knowing the costlier rooms don't sell out and then upgrade as necessary.
o < 95% occupancy, Hotel earns far more as room rate if guest no-shows on their booked award night. 400% more or higher eg us$100 v us$25 / us$200 v us$50
In the old days 2+ years ago where reservations could be cancelled up until say 4pm day of arrival, so even if bad CC number supplied on booking, you were safe to arrive before 4pm cancel deadline, some hotels if expecting to be full (or overbooked) would charge-on-hold the flex rate booking to supplied CC at that 4pm deadline and cancel reservation if attempt failed, and similar for the award night. Conversely if 25% free rooms, hotels won't bother with the card check.
With wide spread room cancel deadline now midnight 2days before or 4pm day before, the above hold-on-CC should not happen at the 1-2 before arrival out cancel deadline, but could still happen around 4pm on day of checkin for flex+award bookings where hotel is full/fullish, though I have also had CC Charging happen 2days out , even on a corp rate i could cancel until 4pm on day of checkin.