strife

Having worked and consulted in the industry for decades, I honestly do not believe most hoteliers even have the technical ability to coordinate such a scheme nor the desire to put in the effort to do so, not to mention the circumstances truly have to be exceptional for the hotels involved to be able to turn a profit from such a scheme. So I just do not think it is reasonable to approach any situation assuming this level of bad faith on the part of the property owners. As I said, overbooking policy exists as consumer protection. Guests are certainly welcome to insist on a refund in a walk situation and in my opinion it would take an exceptionally malicious property not to immediately grant a refund. Again, typically any property will be ecstatic to refund rather than walk a guest.

GrayAnderson

I feel like the comments from The Road Goes On Forever speak to this, and something similar seems to have been at play in my incident as well.

strife

Well you can conspiracy theory up anything you want, but there is a huge difference between a property's preference in walking guests to other properties under the same ownership/management (and I have worked at properties that had this policy although it also made the process easier and faster since we knew the people working at the other properties) versus an intentional and planned scheme to keep accepting reservations beyond RM forecast in the hopes that those reservations can be falsely walked to a lower-ADR property that still has inventory and is still also presumably attempting to sell rooms, all while sufficiently enough guests do not complain about being falsely walked in order to actually make some profit.

Maybe it is not completely obvious to those who do not have experience in the industry, but the circumstances would simply have to be exceptional for this to be beneficial at all. Not to mention the effort involved would seemingly be much better served in attempting to make the lower-ADR property more attractive in the first place.

cbn42

Furthermore, my guess would be that the lower-ADR property would fill up first. I think it's fairly unlikely that the cheaper hotel still has inventory while a more expensive hotel nearby is oversold, especially these days when business travel is limited and leisure travelers tend to be price-conscious.

Matt4200

Depends on the area - I’ve been to San Diego several times recently this year where the Manchester Grand Hyatt has been Sold Out but cheaper nearby hotels are not. People doing staycations want quality too.

The Road Goes On Forever

Hard to give you an exact answer. The whole thing about walking guests, in a select service environment which is what I know, is that everything is highly situational and overall there is rarely a plan unless the negative number starts getting into ludicrous territory where you still have a double digits 24 or 48 hours prior to the date. Overall it's like watching an episode of Hogan's Heroes and instead of the bungling Germans, you have bungling management who far too often provide little to no guidance in too many situations. Many nights over the years I would come in at 11 to do audit and the hotel would be oversold three with five arrivals and it was up to me to figure it out. The good thing about that is it heightens your ability to make decisions and BS guests. The bad side is that management a lot of times would still send emails after the fact and second guess what was done even though they were incommunicado throughout the entire process. As an example, at the HWS I worked at ideally I was supposed to follow the owner's protocol which was to transfer the reservation to one of the two "nearby" (20 miles away) hotels that they also owned and only walk to one of three non-affiliated hotels across the street in a last resort. Always made for some interesting guest interaction as to why they couldn't be walked across the street when they would call that hotel and knew they had rooms.

While there are bad apple properties out there who legit try to screw guests over and there are GM's or management companies who try and scheme or take advantage of people/situations, most places fall into the incompetence/apathy camp rather than the malice camp. Without going into details, most GM's and AGM's I've worked with have only been quasi-vested in their jobs. Hospitality is one of the few industries where as a GM you very much don't need a degree in the field or even a degree at all. I've joked to many people, don't worry if you fail at career X, you can always fall back on hospitality.

LondonElite

That is a hypothesis which I personally doubt holds up in practice.

GrayAnderson

I suspect brand affinity (or a lack thereof) plays a role. I know I have to be far from the only person to simply look on (for example) Hyatt's website to start with rather than going over to Google. If two properties are in a similar market segment (outside of high-end resorts/boutique hotels), then all else being equal I'd expect an off-brand hotel to show as cheaper. Likewise, location probably drives price as much as anything...so a similar-segment hotel in a lousy location provides an "easy fix" in a situation like this.

As I noted, I see two situations, and I think the ability to "trade space" amongst properties you own and/or with "friendly" properties is a thing. There's also a chicken-and-egg issue: If two properties are "similarly" priced as a rule, one would expect that the one that sells out first to have gotten more expensive than the remaining rooms at the other property. This may not breed a "grand conspiracy", but it certainly breeds an indifference to the situation since in theory you can "fix" the problem at no cost to yourself.

strife

Keep in mind that the context is properties that are of at least similar quality or this exercise in elaborate shenanigans gets even further from reality.

DroppedSon

I'm not sure whats going on with availability in vacation destinations this year, but I just got an email from the Polo Beach Club Destination Residence in Maui telling me they aren't able to honor my reservation next month due to overselling. I'm a Globalist with >100 nights and >$12k spend already this year, assuming I don't get walked from any other reservations I'm already booked for ~160 nights/35k spend. Well over half way to LT Globalist. For some reason I assumed I'd be one of the last people to get walked, but I guess nobody is safe.

Should I be asking/expecting some sort of compensation for getting walked? I already purchased airfare/activities for the trip, so it's pretty unfortunate

synergistic

That's ridiculous - the only way you should be on the cut list is that somehow, some way they managed to overbook owners. If anyone deserves compensation for something like this, it's a 160nt member. Tbh, as just a garden variety Globalist, I don't think I should ever be in danger of being advance walked on a (relatively) exotic leisure destination stay.

GrayAnderson

The short answer is that you should be getting compensation of some sort (they're supposed to give you space somewhere if they can't honor it).

How long ago did you make your reservation? This would affect how aggressive I'd be.

DroppedSon

I was offered a strictly inferior room at Grand Champions Wailea or a condo that has less bedrooms at Wailea Beach Villas. Neither are great options, as Grand Champions is a much worse property, and the condo offered at Wailea Beach Villas doesn't have enough bedrooms to accommodate my party. I made the reservation last Tuesday

sethb

Unless you have status (or an Amex card) in which case you pay the hotel nothing and they pay for your first night.

sethb

I've seen cases where it clearly happened. Typically, a convention's members booked a lot of rooms at a low negotiated rate, then the hotel got a better offer and sold rooms to someone else at a higher rate. I was the victim once, until I called the chain's 800 number and used Amex to guarantee my reservation. Then they found a room for me.