Originally Posted by samuelo

I wanted to share with you my experience of trying to book a stay at Arkaba Station for next September. Even though booking almost 12 months out my preferred dates were partially unavailable. To cut a long story short, I figured out the reason my weekend dates were blocked out was because the property runs multi-day walks during that time of year and the final night of the walk is spent in their lodge. They only have 5 rooms and 10 participants on the walk so two people in a room.

As the income from 2 people on the walk would be substantially less than I would be spending to stay at the lodge, I thought I would call the property and ask them to release a room for me. I called and explained this to a reservations agent who said she would need to speak to her supervisor. I then asked to speak to her supervisor directly and explained this to him using actual numbers to illustrate that I would be spending 3x what they would get if they gave me the room vs. allocating it to someone on a walk. In addition, the hotel takes a 20% deposit at the time of booking so they would be sitting on cash from me on Day 1.

The supervisor told me he would need to speak to his director. At this point I imagined someone in senior management would see the logic as I assumed this business was run to maximise profit.

After a day, I got an email saying they could not release the room but would I like to join their walk!

So to summarise they turned down a booking and deposit from a confirmed guest 11 months in advance in favour of a future booking which may or may not materialise for the walk and which would earn them a third of the income. To each their own I guess!