Flying_Duck

I cut and pasted my OP and send it to the HH email address. Yesterday I got a call from the manager of Homewood Suites San Jose who the email had been forwarded to, who after apoligizing profusely told me the follwing:

1) For some reason my Gold VIP status had not been registered in the Hotel's system as "He never, ever walks Gold's and Diamonds". He said he was going to look into how this happened as this obviously was important information for the hotel

2) He had 27 rooms in rennovatikon, but they were several days behind schedule and were not suitable for stays - that was the reason for the shortage.

3) He agreed that it was not right that the walked guest had to work hard to get points and stay credit, this should be done automatically and he said he would take this up with Hilton

4) He offered a free weekend with dinner at my choosing at his hotel.

5) He had never heard about the "Yours is a very bad hotel" PPT and I pointed him to it ( )

I think I accomplished what I set out to do - and that the response was appropriate and thus the matter is concluded as far as I am concerned.

Arcolaio99

Excellet response from the manager. Will you take him up on the offer of a free weekend?

Altaflyer

Way to go. Takes a little nerve but it worked!

BearX220

Ho ho... that's me. I confess to being the author of "YIAVBH," and I still get a trickle of email to my Hotmail account from people seeing it for the first time. Also, it's become a mainstay of more corporate service-training classes and business school lectures than I can count.

The "Hilton family" was extremely conscious of the PPT's (wholly inadvertent) circulation and subsequent effects; it is, I am told, still shown to Doubletree employees. I don't think there are too many Hilton GMs who are unaware of the thing. Despite it all I came to good terms with Doubletree execs. One even appeared with me on an Onyx Software webcast back on '02 to discuss the fallout inside his organization, which I thought was a brave and classy thing to do.

And in the aftermath of the PPT I learned a thing or two about "guaranteed reservations." In short, as others here have surmised, the hotel is guaranteed your money if you don't show up, but you are not guaranteed a room if you do. Hotels don't have the really good predictive software airlines do for setting overbooking margins, so in the evenings they "game the loads" by gut and guesswork. A really adept night manager can show his house at 102 or 103 percent capacity... charging walk-ins the full rack rate and also charging no-shows under the "guaranteed reservation" schemes... in short, getting paid twice for some rooms.

Not very pro-customer, but it goes on at every chain, every day -- one reason why I became queasy about the broad exposure "YIAVBH" got. Doubletree shouldn't be the poster child for overbooking and bad service. It could've happened anywhere.

sassamanlaw

O.K. I gotta ask the question the world is dying to know: Whatever happened to Night Clerk Mike?

divrdrew

Or more importantly...is he working his way along your predicted career path toward a career in septic tanks?

BearX220

I don't know where he is today, but I was told that after some attempts at retraining, he was finally let go some months after The Incident.

The exact hotel property involved is no longer a Doubletree, either -- it lost the affiliation in summer '02, was a Ramada for a year or two, and now it's something else again -- so don't hold a grudge against Doubletree.

bigjim

HHonors Diamond here - just checked in for a one-night stay - had a confirmed Non-Smoking Room Reservation. They said that a group had extended and that they had no Non-Smoking Rooms. They offered to walk me to a Jameson Inn (I find it interesting that they would put themselves in the position of offering the Jameson Inn as a comparable).

I took the smoking room instead and stayed at the Hampton, but I'm just curious what others experiences have been in this regard.

I think that Starwood has a pretty strict policy on walking members of its SPG program but can't find any relevant information on their website or anything recent here on Flyertalk.

omegadeal

I'm surprised they didn't walk someone else bound for a non smoking room and that you got stuck this early in the evening.

I believe there is some type of policy. I ran down to the pantry a few weeks ago around midnight at a Hilton and they were having to walk people. I mentioned to the front desk clerk that I was sure glad I wasn't in their shoes tonight and to hang in there.

She responded with something about how they never walk diamonds and that they had to pay out some type of fee if they did. I didn't ask if that was to corporate or to the guest.

In any case, a walk should always be a step up. I don't know where you're at, but the Jameson doesn't sound like a big improvement. When I was in school I worked at a Holiday Inn and we always walked people to the Marriott or the Hyatt, but never to anything lower than our own property.

UScolorado1k

Had a "guaranteed" reservation at DoubleTree last night (what a joke), but when I checked in at 11:30 PM, there were no rooms to be had. They "walked" me to a Embassy a couple of miles down the road and paid for the room. My question is, do I still get hilton credit for that night? My guess is no, but it never hurts to hope!

pdhenry

Probably should count as a stay (no fault of your own that you got walked); no idea about nights (but see #1); no points unless you spent some money (I'm guessing...).

craz

Do u mean will U get 2 stay Credits? Since they both are apart of HH you should get the one from the DT. Since you werent the one paying for the ES I doubt that you would get the credit.Did you give teh ES your #.

Not too long ago my flight was cancelled and I got them to put me up at the local Hilton, I got an upgraded room and access to the Lounge and was told Id get the credit, i was lucky in that i got a statement for the stay. well after sending it in to CS and maybe cause it was overseas I di get the stay credit and points. BUT the rule of thumb is your name must be on the res for the room and you Must be the one paying for it. In as much as you will probably get the credit fro the DT it will be hard pressed to explain how you slept in 2 different hotels the same night and if tehy check it out they will see you were walked. By me I only had 1 hotel to deal with

BigLar

Well, the person who stays is the one who gets the stay/night/points. But I believe it's irrelevant who pays for it. After all, a lot of us stay using company credit cards or even pre-paid, and we still get the goodies.

MDtR-Chicago

Our rule of thumb (at a Doubletree) is, on a one night stay, the hotel you actually stay at should give you credit as if it were a stay you had booked directly, as long as you give them your HH #. But this will vary based on exactly how the two hotels coordinate the stay. Generally, your original reservation is considered "cancelled", and you are walked in on a new reservation. As long as the two hotels don't have a special rate plan for walks, you should have no trouble getting credit at the hotel you actually stayed at. If they do have something worked out, it may not happen automatically, but you should be able to get credit at one of them, probably the one you actually stayed at.

Again, this will vary based on the hotel's location, ownership, agreements, etc.

It's interesting you got walked as a Gold. There must have been something very unexpected going on that night, as a Hilton hotel would never walk a Gold unless absolutely necessary.

BearX220

It's happened to me. I'm sorry it's still happening. I tried my best.