Originally Posted by JessicaB

I used to own a hotel. If a guest no-shows the standard practice is to report this to the agency. The reason is that you don't have to pay the agency (in ths case Expedia) commission, at least for some types of reservations. The other reason is that if you sell a room via Expedia for 5 nights, your hotel management system is linked to what's called a Channel Manager, which is linked to Expedia, and if the booking is still live it will not allow you to cancel that room and sell it to someone else - the only way it can be cancelled is via Expedia. So most hotels will report a no show to Expedia, that way the booking gets cancelled and you can sell the room again. Even if everyone has been paid, it means the hotel can keep the revenue and double-dip by selling that room again.

I would suggest like others that you at least check in to the hotel, so book a hotel somewhere you can get to. Hotels will also service rooms, even if you put DND on the door we used to ensure that you were alive every 24 hours, and if the room was unoccupied then we would check you out and report it to Expedia, again so that we could resell the room. So it's best to leave something in the room, and explain to the hotel that you want to keep the room but you are staying with a friend. Appear at the end of your stay and check out.