If you have a hotel reservation in Washington during the presidential inauguration, call your property now. Some hotels have been canceling rooms or changing their rules in an apparent effort to pump up their profits.
Here’s what happened to Laura Boyd, who made a reservation at the Washington Plaza Hotel last month through Bestfares.com.
I called twice subsequently to make sure those reservations were confirmed and was assured that they were. Then Bestfares.com called me and conferenced the call with the hotel. I was told the hotel would not honor those reservations and that someone released those rooms to the public in error.
Boyd was offered a “comparable” room 40 miles away, but she didn’t want to stay that far out of town. I contacted Bestfares.com and the hotel, and both denied they were responsible for the dropped reservation. The Washington Plaza Hotel blamed Utell, the hotel reservation system used by Bestfares. After more than a week of back-and-forth, the Washington Plaza Hotel agreed to offer Boyd a room closer to D.C.
This is hardly an isolated incident. On Nov. 6, Donnell Taylor made a reservation at the Admiral Fell Inn in Baltimore for the inauguration through Hotels.com.
We received a phone call from Hotels.com telling us our room had been canceled due to the property management wanting to get the room out at a higher price, so we were left without a room and no more rooms available in that area for the days that we wanted.
The man on the phone was very rude and hateful, he told us that president-elect Barack Obama wanted the rooms for people that was going to stay longer than what we were going to stay! I don’t understand how these people can do this and get by with what they’ve done to us.
I contacted the Admiral Fell Inn. Maria Gruzynski, a spokeswoman, sent the following response:
We are very sorry to hear that these guests had an unfavorable experience with The Admiral Fell Inn through our third party vendor, Hotels.com.
Due to the extreme interest in the inauguration of our next president, our hotel has been reserved to capacity and some reservations were taken in error from that Web site. Hotels.com is reaching out to these guests individually and they are offering them the option to either relocate their reservation or be refunded in full.
Additionally, The Admiral Fell Inn is following up with the Hotels.com Associate that actually responded to this guest to further understand the situation and once we have those details we will forward that information on to you as well.
In some cases, hotels are letting customers keep their rooms, but changing the terms of their reservation. That’s what happened to Tauna Batiste, who had reserved a room at the Hilton Garden Inn Solomons in Dowell, Md., for the inauguration. Here’s the letter she just received from the property.
Please accept this letter as official notification of our updated guarantee policy.
Due to the fact that your reservation is scheduled for such a “Historical Moment” in both U.S. and world history, we have had to implement a few changes to our guarantee policy.
The Hilton Garden Inn Solomons now requires payment in full (room and tax for each night of your stay) prior to your arrival to the property. This advance payment must be received by us no later than the close of business (5:00pm EST) on Friday, January 2, 2009 to secure your reservation.
You currently have a credit card on file to hold your room. This card will be processed for the full amount on January 2, 2009 unless you wish to send us the payment in the form of a cashier’s check (please make sure your confirmation number is written somewhere on the check). On January 2, 2009, if we have not received a cashier’s check and the credit card holding your room declines, your reservation will be cancelled.
Batiste wanted to know if changing the terms is legal. I can find nothing in the Code of Maryland Regulations that specifically forbids this practice. But that doesn’t mean it’s right.
Hotels should be honoring their reservations for the inauguration. Not profiteering from it.
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I received a letter in the mail very similar to the above stating the hotel changed their deposit and cancelation policiy due to the “historical moment.” I ended up canceling since I found someone’s couch to sleep on closer to the events. I’m planning on contacting the Attorney General’s office in Virginia to see if this is legal and will let you know what I hear (if anything).
I think canceling a reservation is flat out wrong, after the room has been booked; however, charging up front for the room seems like a valid business practice for such a time, for the hotel management to insure they don’t have any no-shows at a time when they know they can book to capacity. I fail to see why a customer cannot understand the validity of this, especially since it should mean their room will be absolutly, without a doubt, reserved.
Utterly ridiculous. Trying to profit from a future historic event? Very unethical and very disturbed that this isn’t somehow illegal. But these hotels know they can get away with it because there are hundreds of people trying to get rooms around there. Terrible business.
In your examples it seems all were booked online through aggregators. They are notorious for not being the “good partners” of hotels and rooms booked online tend to get the bottom of the barrel in room quality.
From what I understand, Hotels.com, Priceline, etc have contracts for rates for hotels and they pre-load them into the system. I wonder if the hotel chains/properties did notify them and the change was never made.
It seems many (if not all) of your ombudsman issues begin with I reserved a _____ with _______.com.
@ Daniel
Becuase businesses should not have the ability to alter the terms of the reservation once it is made. By your logic the hotel would be within in rights to double the price of the room just because the space had become more valuable.
Additionally, I know from experiance that just because you prepay for a room doesn’t mean that the hotel won’t still goof and overbook. I had this happen to me with a hotel room I booked directly through the hotel for a convention once. The hotel made it right, but that was cold comfort for the 3 hours I didn’t know if I would have a place to stay.
Of course hotels in the DC area are profiteering from the inauguration.
The crowd is going to be insane. The mayor has lifted home-renting laws, so anybody can rent out any room and broom closet for whatever they want without legal implications (taxes regulations, etc). If you look online at craigslist what people are asking for downtown rooms, you will find staggering prices. One can really wonder whether we are in an economic crisis if people can still afford such prices.
Overall, I’d advise people to stay away. The locals here have done their logistic calculations, and found that DC can in no way handle 3-5 million visitors. A million or two is fine. After that, the infrastructure can not handle the crowd anymore.
Metro can handle one million people day. No more. They haven’t figured out where to put the 10.000 touring buses that are expected. Most likely access to downtown (I-66, I-395, I-295 etc) will be entirely closed for personal vehicles. Only licensed buses will be allowed to travel there.
In short: If you’re not from DC and haven’t booked yet, don’t come.
*It will be a mess*
And that’s assuming good weather, and no real calamities.
A ‘Historic Event’, yeah right! Everyone in the Washington D.C. hospitality business knows that every eight years in mid-January is an inauguration of a new President (four years if the previous President screwed up enough to be not-re-elected for a second term).
The only reason this event is ‘Historic’ is because the hospitality industry has seen how many people are interested in this years event, and have decided that they want to make much more money than they first expected. If you go back far enough, this has happened before, I’m sure.
Of course this is a historic event. To suggest otherwise is downright stupid. The first non-Caucasian president of the US is being sworn in. It would have been historic had Hilary Clinton won as well.
I have no problems with hotels jacking up the rates to whatever they can get. I also have no problem with them making onerous cancellation policies.
BUT!!!. It is completely unethical to change the terms of the reservations once it’s been made in good faith. Its probably legal, but a terribly unethical business practice.
This also shows the limitations of booking through 3rd party websites. For the life of me I don’t understand why people do it.
My daughter’s college group was similarly screwed. The professor booked 20 rooms back in June 2008. She booked direct with the hotel. She called to reconfirm after the election and the hotel had “lost” the reservation and at that point was sold out. So sorry, out of luck. The gruop is now booked to stay an hour outside of DC at a Super 8.
Jasper, that’s why I have a television: I’ll be watching from the relative comfort of my living room or office. If someone gave me a check for $1 million to go to DC, I’d consider it–but not otherwise. LOL.
I agree with you, Carver. Once the reservation has been made, IMHO, that’s a contract between you and the hotel. It’s set in stone. Or should be.
This explains the flock of inquiries coming into cities up to three and a half hours away from the District! I’m afraid, though, that people booking that far out might be better off watching the event on TV from their hotel rooms.
I love the part where the President Elect is reponsible for the reallocation of rooms to those staying longer (paying more tax) – already for the money grab!
I stayed in hotels in DC 90% of May through October for business. Concerned my project would bleed into January, I asked the hotel if I needed to go ahead and make reservations. This was back in JULY – LONG before the election was decided – and was told that Inauguration Week had different rules – a minimum 3 night stay – paid in advance.
Yes, the hotels ARE taking advantage of the historic moment, however, I don’t think it’s anything new from prior Inaugurations. However, hotels should stick to their agreements…
So the people who are the 2 millionth person in the inaguration line will see what? They’re going to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars just to say, “I was there.” I can say the same thing through the marvel of television and will see/hear way more than they ever will. Stupid, that’s all I can say.
@Rob
By that same logic, you would never go to a sporting or theatrical event unless you had top notch seats
There is a qualitative difference between the experience of seeing something live versus on television. There is an energy and excitement that corresponds to a live event that television lacks.
the great part of this whole historical mess is that he is not the first Black president has the whole world be messed up by PC ? his mother is white so living in my nieghbourhood in detriot that makes you mixed race or other unprintable things depending what area of town you live in. is it wrong to piont this out he is 1/2white and 1/2 black .–( funny all my friends in nortehn va want to get away from there for that day after all you wil not be able to get to work.