ftv

I made a reservation at the Hotel Indigo San Diego at the 50-week reservation window in anticipation of a sold-out city due to a large convention. I booked a corporate rate of $110/night, about right for a HI. I put down my credit card and received a written confirmatin in my email.

Two weeks alter I receive a voice message from the hotel that they have decided to cancel my reservation. Reason given was my company )an international behemouth) doesn't have a contract with them for 2011. No chance to respond, no rebuttal, no negotiation, they just cancelled it and didn't wait to talk directly to me. The reservation disppeared from my online upcoming reservations, but I still have the confirmation email. I was told I was free to rebook, but as I anticipated not only is the hotel sold-out, so is the entire city. The hotel isn't stupid and knows this.

As a Platinum Ambassador, I wrote to both the PC Desk and the Ambassador Desk. Both were worthless as both referred it back to the hotle, who refuses to honor the written confirmation.

I guess I'll be using that written confirmation as my pillow as I sleep on the streets of San Diego like a homeless person.

I am not happy: if the rate wasn't valid, priorityclub.com should not have offered it to me.

I'd both like to offer this as a word of warning about Hotel Indigos that a confirmed reservation isn't confirmed if they don't want it to be and to take your business elsewhere and ask, "What would you do?"

IC6A

The rate has to be loaded by hotel management. IHG or PriorityClub does not load the hotel daily rate. You need to talk to the hotel directly and in the meantime talk to your company corporate contract department. If the hotel can not solve the problem to your satisfaction then you may contact PriorityClub to complain and rise the issue. However, since the corporate rate is the hotel specify issue. Priorityclub would not help very much to negotiate the rate with you but only deal with the service problems.

Try to find someone in your company who deal with corporate travel contracts as they are the only one who can help in real term.

Shareholder

Not only that but if this was for company business does not your company's travel office or agency have to get you a replacement room or reschedule the trip? Or were you trying to use a corporate rate for a personal stay?

myperks

does it really matter? the OP made a reservation and a confirmation was given...

corporate rates can be used for personal stays (at least per my company's travel policy)...

i'm guessing the property decided it can sell the room for far more $$$ than the OP's corporate rate... and made up some lame excuse that the rate is invalid...

tinkybelle

i dont believe it matters.
he had a reservation and the should have emailed or phoned him to tell him that the booking rate was not valid and offered him even the rack rate!
im sorry this is disgusting and the hotel has to make it right.
they just decided to bump him so they could book out the whole hotel. What if they did it to you on say a free night. wouldnt you expect at least a phone call.
id definitely escalate it further.

Shareholder

While the original booking was confirmed under the corporate rate, that contract has lapsed and the rate no longer valid. The hotel should have contacted the OP to advise it could no longer honor the rate as the contract lapsed, but then offered the best regular rate to hold the booking.

Extending a corporate rate on personal stays implies a benefit to the employee from the employer and thus is taxable in most jurisdictions. The difference between a corporate rate and the best public rate could add up to a fairly substantial amount in a year, adding a few thousand dollars to one's taxable liability.

ftv

The trip was for business, but that shouldn't matter. I have been entitled to the corporate rate and have received it at IHG hotels with no hassle for the last six years whether the company books the room or I do.

Fact is, I made the reservation on priorityclub.com, just how PC likes it. I entered my city and dates and the rate was one PC themselves offered me. PC should not have offered me a rate that was not valid. I took what PC themselves offered me, put down my credit card and received a written confirmation of the reservation.

This hardly matters, but the company they claim has "no contract" is Berkshire Hathaway....who has discounts in place with pretty much every entity on the planet.

The scummy hotel just decided they could get more than $110/night, a very fair rate for a Hotel Indigo, and cancelled me outright.

The hotel has had my complaint now for four days and so far done nothing.

swintonowl

I had issues in South Africa during the world cup where several hotels refused to honor bookings and cancelled them claiming they were already sold out and had only been sold to me by mistake. This all happened 10 months ahead of check-in.

Even though these were personal bookings and some of them on points one of the hotels even had the cheek to contact my company travel department and tell them to let me know that the reservation was cancelled!

In the end I contacted the CEO of Intercontinental by email and got a response from his PA within 30 minutes. They contacted the regional manager and everything got sorted out.

FD1971

Right on the money, + 1

It seems you do not get the point...

Of course, you were entitled to the corporate rate as long as a valid contract existed, but it seems that for 2011 the contract/agreement is not valid anymore, because one party involved decided not to extend it...

Do you honestly expect to receive a discount after the promotion period is over, in other words, do you expect a business to give you benefits of an agreement that is no longer in place ?

I agree with you that the hotel saw an opportunity to make some more $$$ and the comment above by shareholder describes the best practice in such situations, but again I do not see any valid legal ground that would force them to honour the reservation.

If it makes business-sense to make one ( pretty loyal ) customer unhappy just to make some more $$$ for a couple of days is worth another discussion...

mikew99

That is, in essence, the problem: Hotels are not forced to honor reservations that they accept and confirm. There was nothing to force the hotel to accept the booking at the company rate. (If the contract was expiring, why did the rate even show up?) But since the hotel offered the rate, accepted it, and confirmed it, they should be bound by it, plain and simple.

At the very least, they should have held the reservation, even if they could no longer honor the rate. But to unilaterally cancel the reservation under this circumstance is a scummy thing to do. OP, please complain to IHG, and to the AG if necessary!

markis10

Sounds like a bounding offer to this lay person, the rates need to be loaded by someone into the system, if they are not valid why were they offered? If they are automatically loaded why should the OP suffer because of a systems issue?

Thumper

Think you'll end up with lice, eat garbage, be harrassed, molested and stolen from like they do every day of their life as well?

Make sure you mention to them that you got shut out of your luxury hotel. Maybe they wil give up their spot over the heating grate due to your suffering.