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Hotel rooms - What you get vs. what you reserved

Hotel rooms - What you get vs. what you reserved

Old Feb 24, 2000, 9:17 am
  #16  
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About 80% of the time I reserve 2 beds and non-smoking. Of these when going to to room I find it is about 80% of the time a king and smoking. Go figgur.
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Old Feb 24, 2000, 10:30 am
  #17  
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Programs: AAdvantage EXP/1mm/Admirals,United Silver+Club (life),Marriott Titanium,Hilton & Accor Gold
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Three very simple facts:

1) Hotels do not pre-block rooms for one main reason...

HOTELS ROUTINELY OVERBOOK!

If you have 225 rooms and 233 stayovers scheduled, how do you allocate the block? What happens when a guest extends a stay? The desk clerk would have to unblock an arriving guest, then do the extension. Blocking rooms creates a mess of problems in a hotels PMS (property management system).

2) If the hope of a King Bed, Non-smoking room isn't present, a good number of folks will book elsewhere. Hotels don't want to lose potential guests.

3) Travel agents routinely request King Non-smoking for everything they book, even though their guests may want something else. If these rooms are blocked for guests that don't want them, what about all the folks that were denied their choice in the meantime?
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Old Feb 24, 2000, 11:29 am
  #18  
 
Join Date: Jan 2000
Posts: 121
When caling to reconfirm with the hotel directly ( esp. Starwood ) be sure you ask for the front desk or front office MANAGER or they will transfer you to the CRO, and the CRO can not check your room in or fill your requests. All they tell you to do is make another long distance phone call to the hotel and try the FD or FO Managers.
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Old Feb 24, 2000, 12:08 pm
  #19  
 
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: New York, NY, USA
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Hmmm...I've stayed all over the place, but particularly in a lot of Hiltons, and I would say that my experience is mixed across the board with getting what you paid for.

But, IMHO SMOKING ROOMS ARE THE WORST INVENTION EVER! Why? In the old days when there was no distinction, maybe 30% of the inhabitants of a particular room had smoked. Now, in the odd occasion that you get a smoking room against your wishes, 90% of the room's occupants had smooked. The old way, rooms didn't smell so bad. But now the all stink! I long for those old days, I'm afraid.
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Old Feb 24, 2000, 2:36 pm
  #20  
 
Join Date: Aug 1999
Location: Vancouver, BC, CANADA
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On a recent trip, I was given a smoking room, even though I requested a non-smoking room. I called down to the front desk and was told that my reservation did not have my preference. I chalked it up to the new corporate travel agent. After returning home, I found my confirmation which said, wouldn't you know, non-smoking. I fired off a letter to the manager and have not heard anything since.

By the way, my employer practically owns a few suites at this hotel. There are usually 2 or 3 of us there every weeknight. Let's eee what comes of it!
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Old Feb 24, 2000, 7:23 pm
  #21  
 
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One of the reasons hotels can only take your preferences and not guarantee you'll get what you asked for is because things change. People don't check out when they say they're going to, a room is out of service, etc. Just last week we stayed in a hotel and once in, extended our stay for one extra night. If the hotel had guaranteed these rooms to someone, they would have been out of luck.
Allocating exact rooms before someone checks in is almost like laying out the front page of a paper days in advance. You just don't know what the news will be, nor how long the story. Most hotels will try to get you what you requested. It's been my experience, too, that the earlier you arrive in the day, the better your chances are of getting the room you requested.
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Old Feb 24, 2000, 8:14 pm
  #22  
 
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: New York
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In the old days did most Hotel room windows actually open to allow some venting of cigarette fumes?

Now as someone has already stated the average smoking room is soaked with as much soot as Mt. St Helenes. I know smokers who even refuse to sleep in them.

I often arrive late in the evening to find my confirmed non-smoking room unavailable. Fortunately, I'm so exhausted from traveling at that point that I can lay towels on the bathroom floor, shut the door, and sleep in the relatively smoke-free bathroom. OK, this only happened once, but you get the point.



[This message has been edited by Dauphin (edited 02-24-2000).]
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Old Feb 27, 2000, 1:06 pm
  #23  
 
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Charlottetown/Ottawa, Canada
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I have occasionally had a problem with specific room type availability. I found out after one experience too many that Delta Hotels' Privilege program guarantees smoking/non-smoking, but not anything else. For some reason, the member profile forces a selection between smoking and non-smoking, and I really don't care which it is. And once half the rooms are automaticall eliminated, the odds of getting your queen/king or double-double preference goes way down.

Since I'm 5'11" and sleep flat on my back and don't like pressing the top of my head against the headboard, a double bed, which is 6', leaves my feet sticking at or off the foot of the bed.

My workaround was to insist that they put a big note on my file indicating that I didn't care about the smoking status, but that if I didn't get a queen-sized bed, I would cancel the reservation, and also tell recommend that my company cancel their contract with the hotel chain. I've had few problems since.
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