Hotel Nightmare-"Accomodations Plus"
 

Hi, I apologize if this is in the wrong forum and if there is information about this elsewhere, but I couldn't find it. So here's my story -

During the recent storms, I was scheduled to fly HPN-IAD-LAX and WX delayed my HPN-IAD such that I would miss my connection to get back home by the end of the night. At HPN, I was re-accommodated on the first flight out the next morning from JFK-LAX. She also gave me a voucher for a room at a hotel in JFK (one of the great unsung 1k perks that I learned about on FT), gave me the address and off I went through the storm to JFK. 2 hours later, I arrived at the hotel with my voucher as I have done many times before and was very unpleasantly surprised to be told that they could not honor my voucher as they had no rooms available and United had never actually booked me a room! She explained to me that in these situations, United actually uses a 3rd party vendor called "accommodations plus" who actually handles the bookings for them and I was the 4th person that night who had showed up and Accommodations plus had dropped the ball. The manager said that she had nothing available at all and while she sympathized with me, I would need to go and sleep on the floor at the airport until my flight the next morning.

So I immediately call the 1k desk who tell me that there is nothing they can do and the JFK cs is closed for the night but it's not United's fault either-everyone simply blamed "accommodations plus" which of course can only be reached by airlines so I was stuck. She suggested that I call around the area hotels and submit the bill for reimbursement and it would be reimbursed by United as long as it was "within reason". I started to call hotels and anyone who had rooms wanted over $500 and I had no interest in laying out that kind of cash for a promise of reimbursement and no documentation.

In the end, I headed to JFK on the off chance that there would be someone there and as luck would have it, there was a csr who happened to be there, listened to my situation and gave me a voucher for another hotel. So again, off I go to hotel #2 and (you can tell where this is going) they tell me "sorry - sold out, we have no rooms and no bookings for you - take it up with United or accommodations plus." I have tried to cut down on the gory details to focus on the facts of the story, but suffice it to say, it was an interesting night.

I have never heard of accommodations plus (http://www.apihotels.com/) but does anyone have similar experiences or a little bit more information about this process? It was more than a little frustrating to be in the middle when one company passes the buck to another, but does anyone have suggestions on how to prevent this in the future/deal with it during the nightmare?

I've never heard of that happening! Most (maybe all?) of my UAL overnights have been at ORD, and I've always been accomodated at the Hilton. No such complications...
Sounds like quite a sleepless nightmare, even without all the gory details you left out.

I had the same thing happen to me in Detroit with an MX. Hotel didn't have rooms but, I had a voucher. I paid for a room, and spent the next 4 weeks emailing every day until I got a check.

I've never heard of this company, only Airport Accommodations, which I know UA uses at some airports.

I don't mean to be mean....... BUT....


After being screwed over once by a hotel voucher which didn't mean an actual hotel room, wouldn't you try and call the second time, to ensure the hotel had a reservation for you BEFORE leaving the airport again?

Perhaps third times the charm?

I've had 3 WX hotel accommodations in the past 3 months, all have worked flawlessly. Stinks that the OP had so much trouble. Maybe it was a JFK CSR issue (aren't they known to be a little rude sometimes?)

This doesn't sound like a JFK CSR issue (given that he had the same problem with HPN CSR). JFK is a rather small station without that many flights per day (but on the upside, it's possible to know a chunk of the agents there without being GS). The last UA flight arrives around midnight, so there's a few UA employees around for that (around baggage, if pre-security), but otherwise, things thin out a lot after the last flight to LAX leaves.

HPN-IAD is Colgan, hence the hotel provider, which is not the one UA uses AFAIK. As with all things Colgan, YMMV. When their Saab's start, I'm impressed.

No idea on the snafu at JFK. Makes sense that a storm would foul things up and everything would be booked solid.

Sorry about your experience.

I don't know if the United ground staff @ HPN is actual United staff, or staff from one of the regional carriers, but I can say with almost certainty, that they are NOT Colgan employees.

The only time you'd deal with Colgan staff directly is on the subsidized Colgan Routes, and even then you'd see them only at the EAS city, not the hub.

HPN is Air Wisconsin.

As far the hotels go....I don't know how it works at larger stations, but at smaller ones, we call the hotel before giving out vouchers, ask how many rooms they have available and the rate including tax. We then "Reserve" as many rooms as they'll allow us to have and then we start issuing vouchers. No middle man.

Summer can be hit or miss in Maine. Just this past Saturday I was dealing with a cancellation and had to go through about 15 hotels before finding one that takes our vouchers and one that had rooms open...summer in Maine is tough.

Looking at this page, Colgan is listed as one of the 'clients' of the accomodation company which evidently handled the OP's accomodation request. So, regardless of who the employees on the ground get paid by, Colgan operated the flight and contracted with the accomodation provider.

TBH, when an employee faces me, if their uniform identifies them as working for a particular company, then that's the company I see them working for. I really don't care what goes on behind the scenes and who owns who and which contract is executed or what time they eat lunch. It's irrelevant. If they're indepedent contractors working under contract to Colgan to provide ground services, it's still Colgan. I frankly find passing the buck around, which I've noted in a couple of threads today, to be quite customer unfriendly.