HOWEVER, what happened to the consumer LAW that says you have three days to cancel a transaction. I KNOW there is one, ie., signing up to get new windows, whatever, phone service, and having 72 hours to cancel with no penalty. Certainly this has to apply to my situation. Any ideas what I can do? THANKS!

I don’t see that the prepaid reservation is the problem. When you check into a hotel they run an authorization for the entire stay plus incidentals. So in effect they have your money regardless.

I am doubly surprised that in filling out the guest survey nothing happened. I recently gave a scathing review to a certain Hilton property. A few days later I got a call from the General Manager who told me that Hilton takes these very seriously and we worked out the issue. But apparantly Corporate had gotten ahold of my review.

I try to pick hotels with cancellation policy of “6:00 PM on the day of arrival” because things can happen like a metting running over, a meeting being postponed, something more urgent or important came up at another client in a nearby clity and etc.

Also, I have noticed that the discount for pre-pay\payment in advance\etc isn’t that great. Most of the discounts I have seen are in the $ 10 to $ 20 a night range which is not enough of a discount for me to purchase one.

But I did learn the lesson discussed by the article — don’t give hotels your money before services are rendered, or you lose your bargaining position!

I think your earlier point (if the refundable rate is the average “going” rate, then prepaid rates are a discount) hits the nail on the head, but the spice in the stew is what’s been happening to the travel industry over the last year or so, especially hotels. Even as the economy started to teeter a couple of years ago, hotels were still rushing to build more and more rooms, and there’s a huge oversupply in many markets (as evidenced by the growing number of hotel properties in bankruptcy, foreclosure, or just plain abandoned to the lenders.

In times like these, it’s hard to tell what the market rate “should” be. Are hotels offering the lower-priced options that the economy says are the rational prices to be offered, but with enough “prepay” strings newly attached that unused noncancellable bookings offset the “rational” price? Are the “refundable” rates artificially higher than they should otherwise be, due to the presence of this “nonrefundable” prepaid rate?

One thing I will say – there’s a huge barrier to entry in the airline business (namely, the capital required), and some of the airlines do everything they can to avoid competition. Given the comparatively paltry amount, however, needed to build a small hotel, and the ease of which hotels can switch flags, and I don’t see too many traveler-unfriendly policies getting hold in the industry. It’s just too easy for one player to upset the applecart.

I’m speechless. And that doesn’t happen very often. :)

Did you book via Priceline/Hotwire? The front desk’s response make no sense whatsoever, not even a little. Assuming that your post is mostly accurate, I have to believe that that is a problem with the hotel more than anything.

I’ve had housekeeping miss my room on occassion. I’ve never seen the front desk look at my reservation. They just call housekeeping and say, so and so room needs to be cleaned.

My strong suspicion is that the hotel is going through some drama whether its new management/ownership, financial crisis, something.

We told the manager at checkout about our experience, and she shrugged and said because we pre-paid there was nothing she could do. I was invited to fill out the internet survey after our stay, but I never heard a peep back from them.

I had been staying at that particular hotel many times over many years, and always been very happy, but after one experience like that, I realized the economic value of being disloyal and shopping around.

And ditto with Carver: much ado about nothing. Sure one can blog whatever they feel like, but it doesn’t necessarily make something true unless maybe “tangibly” backed up by something we all can pretty much agree with.

Pretty much, anyway.

It seems to me that all the hotel chains are doing is creating a product to be competitive with Hotwire or Priceline, but removing the middleman (and the property opaqueness). No problem as far as I’m concerned.

And this isn’t new. Starwood for example has run a “promotion” for years giving between 25 to 33 percent off by booking a nonrefundable, fully prepaid room for 3 or more days.

Personally, I think this is much ado about nothing.

But, for some reason, it took an hour-long three-way conference call between me, the hotel manager, and Expedia in order to extend my pre-paid reservation by one night. It was fascinating that neither Expedia nor the hotel seemed to want my extra $160.