Anyone have experience of using the Platinum room availability guarantee when all the hotels in a city appear full?

I have used the guarantee for the first time to secure a booking for the 3rd June in Coventry to attend a concert in the Ricoh Arena.

All the Accor hotels in Coventry and out as far as Birmingham are showing as full (except for Platinum guaranteed availability rates) as appear all the other hotel brands within the same radius.

I have booked the Novotel Coventry M6 as it's the closest hotel to the concert venue paying nearly double the rate I would normally expect to pay for this hotel but there is nothing else available (unless I use the guarantee) and walking distance to the venue is important.

Having made the reservation using the avaialbility guarantee what are the chances of being walked especially as all the other hotels in the vicinity are full that night also?

Out of interest how does Accor make the guarantee work? Is a percentage of rooms held back for this purpose?

If the hotel does need to walk guests how will they decide who gets walked?

I have booked these rooms several times and have never been walked - then again, it was just that particular hotel which was full.

I would assume that pulling the Platinum Guaranteed Rate, and paying double means that you are pretty well covered. I'd assume if they would walk someone, it would be a low rate/no status.

Enjoy Bruce Springsteen!

I also booked the Ibis Tokyo via rooms reserved for club members when the official site (and brokers) were giving a "sold out" for that day.

They couldn't accommodate the room upgrade for Plat, for obvious reasons if the hotel was full.

Julien

Thanks, looking forward to it.

Can somebody explain me how this guarantee works. I want to book an hotel in Cologne, Germany in September but most Accor hotels, especially the upper scale hotels I am interested in are showing full. I was quite surprised of that and checked on the web what kind of event there might be in town to explain fully booked hotels several months in advance. It seems that there is a big convention in town.
As a plat member I should normally be allowed to book a room at the hotel of my choice even if hotel full, but they are not bookable even when I am logged-in. I also checked on the Le Club page to see if there was any black-out dates for this and only one hotel in Cologne (Ibis) is listed as having black-out dates (including my dates).
So how should I do ? E-mail the hotel for booking ?
Thank you

I usually just email the hotel.

I have got a question related to the guaranteed room availability so I think it would fit in this thread. I want to book a 5 night stay but on the 3rd night the hotel is full so I can only book using the guaranteed room availability. However this increases the rate for all 5 nights. When I make 3 bookings, night 1,2, night 3 and night 4,5 I only pay the guaranteed room availability rate for night 3 and early booking rate for night 1,2,4 and 5 so that is much cheaper. Does anyone have experience with multiple bookings for one stay period? I hope it doesn't require me to check out and in between the bookings in the hotel during my stay.

Hi,

you may want to call the hotel or a call center. Their booking tool allows to select different rates for one stay. That being said even if you were to make 3 back to back bookings online the hotel would certainely not require you to check-in and check-out every day.

Wondering if anyone knows the answer to this. Looking at making a booking for Xmas period in Cartagena. No regular availabiilty, but room available through platinum guarantee. However, although Platinum now I will not be at the time of the stay (status ends in September).

Is it necessary to hold platinum at the time of the stay or at the time of booking?

On a related note, anyone know anything about the Bovedas de Santa Clara in Cartagena? It suggests it is opening in June - has it been closed for renos? I can't find any regular availability for any dates anywhere. Just wondering.

Thanks.

Can I ask you how do you see that ? This is in link with my post in this thread. Because the hotels I am looking for are just displayed as "non available". Thanks

As I understand it provided you are logged in to your Accor account with Platinum status an availability guarantee rate should always be offered until 48 hours out form checkin (unless it is one of the few blackout dates). The rate should show as "Le Club AH loyalty platinum" or similar. That was my experience of using availability guarentee last week.

When not logged in to your Accor account the hotel will simply show as unavailable.

If whilst logged in no rates are being offered it is either a IT glitch or the hotel concerned is possibly rather naughtily ignoring this stated status benefit.

A Accor hotel choosing to ignore a stated Le Club benefit isn't beyond the realms of possibility?

Yes, this is how I did it. Some dates I could not see due to a black-out over new year.

Now I see for the first time what Goldorak mentioned above.
I'm looking at the Novotel in Melaka for the 25-26th and it is just telling me the hotel isn't available.

But that is not how it should be.

Note: The only blackout date for this property is NYE.

I've just called the Hotel. Asked to talk to the reservations department and was told by the person who picked up "when is your booking for".
I mentioned the 25th and they said "Sorry we are full". I then mentioned Plat and was then transferred to reservations.

The guy in reservations was quick and helpful. "Sure we have rooms". "What room would you like". "How many rooms would you like".

Ended up getting a "Member stay B&B" rate which is very well priced and not some "Platinum (rack) Rate".

I am glad it ended up nicely for you, but as you said, that's not how the website should work.