Originally Posted by
strife
Any property should be ecstatic to refund an overbooking. Ovebooking policies are consumer protection, existing primarily because (poorly-behaving) properties would rather just cancel the reservation.
Eh, not quite. I suspect that there are cases where the "walk" is profitable for the owner, either because they own both properties (and so any question of the hotels billing one another is simply shuffling money between accounts) or because they're able to get space at the walked-to hotel for less than you're paying them. For the latter, if I pay $150 for a room and then the hotel walks me somewhere they have a standing arrangement for rooms at $100, the hotel would be pocketing $50. So you have two subsets of cases where the hotel might prefer to stick you with the walk (and keep your non-refundable reservation) rather than refund you.
(The policies at least mean you'll have someplace to stay, but the "bad behavior" is issues like those two sets of cases.)