Many hotels overbook, just like the airlines, and if too many guests actually show up, the hotel will have to "walk" certain guests to other hotels, which typically involves providing tranportation to the other hotel and being comped for one night. Hotels generally have relationships with one another to make this process easier, so that even when a city is fully booked, the hotels work with each other to accomodate guests that have to be walked.

I've been walked twice in my life (which I describe below), although neither time involved a true luxury hotel. I'm curious if anyone has ever been walked by a luxury hotel and what the circumstances were. Here are my two cases:

1. In 1996, in the earliest days of on-line hotel booking, I was trying to find a room in Boston for that evening. Travelocity was showing zero availability at every major Boston hotel, but I kept on checking, and eventually the Bostonian Hotel showed a room available and I booked it. I caught the last shuttle from LGA to BOS that night and showed up at the hotel at around 11:00pm. I remember my conversation with the front desk clerk almost verbatim: "Hello Mr. [Blumie]. We've been expecting to. We have your reservation, but we don't have a room for you, but don't worry, we found a room for you at the Ramada at the airport."

Now the Bostonian hotel is a near-Luxury property. It's not a Four Seasons, but I'd consider it a step above your typical Westin or Hyatt. The old Ramada at Logan Airport, on the other hand, was probably the biggest dump in the City of Boston. (It has since been torn down, thank god.) I was livid, not so much that I was being walked -- although I wasn't thrilled about that -- but that they thought I was going to stay at the Ramada at the airport after having booked the Bostonian. I asked to speak to the manager. As it happened, the hotel's GM, who was new, was still there that night. I laid in to him, and at the same time got my girlfriend, who was a seasoned travel agent, on the phone who laid in to him as well. As the GM was new to the hotel and the city, he had not yet established the relationships with other GMs in the city that may have helped him resolve this situation; there was nothing he could do. My girlfriend, bless her soul, had a contact at the Four Seasons in Boston, and although they were sold out, they took the living room portion of a suite, which could be locked off from the bedroom portion when that room was sold as a regular room and not as a suite, and put a bed in it for me. (It's what the Four Seasons provides when a guest needs a "cot" in their room, but, as you'd expect from a Four Seasons, it was more comfortable than the regular beds at any other hotel.)

A week later, I received a letter of apology from the GM at the Bostonian and an invitation for a free weekend stay at the hotel. Between my girlfriend getting me into the FS and the free weekend at the Bostonian, everything worked out for the best.

2. Just this week I was walked by Le Parker Meridien in NYC. I knew that the city was fully booked that night, so when I checked in at 7:30pm, I jokingly said to the front desk clerk, "I hope you have a room for me." She pulled up the reservation, and then gave a nudge to the on-duty manager, who happened to be standing next to her. He looked at her screen and then said to me, "It's funny that you should say that."

I'll keep this story shorter than the last. I ended up negotiating a deal with the manager that I would pay for that night, even though he was walking me to Morgan's (where they gave me a huge suite), and he would give me a free night the following week when I was traveling on my own nickel. What surprised me about being walked from this hotel, however, is that I'm somewhat of a regular there (I've probably stayed six times or so this year), usually booking premium rooms. I would have thought they'd walk someone who was less of a repeat customer.

Does anyone know what the factors are that hotels use in determining who to walk?