Hotel Overbooking: Don’t Let It Happen To You

Have you ever arrived at your hotel only to be told that you didn’t really book a room there? If so, you might have thought that you were getting forgetful, thinking that you’d secured your room when really you hadn’t. The truth may be something else entirely. You might be a victim of hotel overbooking.

What is hotel overbooking?

Many hotels allow their rooms to get overbooked. What this means is that they allow more people to book rooms than the number of rooms that they actually have available. If the actual number of people who books rooms shows up to claim those rooms, some of them aren’t available. The hotel may try to turn you away. This is overbooking.

Why would hotels do this?

Hotels choose to overbook for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it’s rare that everyone who books a room is going to show up. The hotel assumes that a few people will cancel and that they won’t end up having a problem accommodating everyone who shows up for a room. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the hotel can maximize its profits this way. If people do cancel then the hotel charges them a cancellation fee for a room that they’d already planned to give to another paying customer, effectively getting paid twice for one room. In fact, this practice can be so profitable to hotels that there are entire educational courses devoted to teaching hotel management how to do it!

Signs that you’re a victim of hotel overbooking

A hotel is not actually very likely to own up to the fact that it overbooked the rooms. This would be bad for business. Instead, hotels will use a series of excuses to make it seem as though it’s not really their fault that you aren’t going to get the room that you had planned on getting. Here are some signs that you are a victim of overbooking:

• The hotel tries to tell you that it’s your fault that you’re not getting a room. Common excuses hotels will use when turning you away due to overbooking include saying that there’s no room booked under your name, that you must have accidentally booked the room at another location, that your credit card was denied or that you canceled or never confirmed your room. If you’re sure that you booked the room properly then you’ve probably become a victim of overbooking.
• The hotel tries to tell you that they canceled the room. They may say that they sent you an email or left you a voice mail message letting you know in advance that there was a problem with the room and that they would be canceling your stay. If you didn’t really receive a message then there’s a good chance that they just overbooked you.
• The hotel says that there are last minute problems with your room. They tell you that the building recently flooded or that they just had a major power outage in half of the building. Of course, this is sometimes true. However, it may also be an excuse that the hotel is using because they overbooked you.

How to avoid becoming a victim of overbooking

There are a few simple tips that you can follow that will limit the likelihood that you will become a victim of overbooking. These tips include:

• Print out all confirmation receipts showing that you booked the room. When you have a piece of paper with a confirmation number showing the exact booking information, a hotel is going to be less capable of turning you away with a flimsy excuse.
• Call the hotel the day before you are set to arrive. Ask to confirm your reservation. Request a confirmation number or the name of the person who confirmed your reservation.
• Arrive as close to check-in time as possible. If the hotel has overbooked it will be the people who arrive later in the day who get walked away from the hotel. Getting there early helps to guarantee that you’ll get your room.
• Notify the hotel if you will be checking in late. Calling that day, especially if you are unexpectedly delayed by late transportation, to let the hotel know what time to expect you will help to secure your room.
• Join a hotel rewards program that offers hotel overbooking protection. That’s right, some rewards programs actually offer protections that help you to avoid this problem or to be financially compensated if it occurs.

What to do if the hotel sends you away

What if you do all of these things and you are still a victim of hotel overbooking? There are a few things that you can do if a hotel sends you away:

• Stand up for yourself. Before you leave the hotel, make sure that you’ve done all that you can to get the room that you booked. Speak to a manager. Ask for a phone number to speak to the regional manager. Clearly express that you are concerned that you are being walked from the hotel due to overbooking and that you’re not happy about the situation.
• Ask for assistance with locating new accommodations. The hotel should help you to find another hotel in the area that has lodging available for you. In fact, the hotel should make it easy for you to get to the other hotel and should actually even pay for your first night’s stay.
• Request a voucher to stay at the hotel in the future. If the hotel overbooked you then they are profiting. Don’t let them profit off of you. Let them know that you are concerned about overbooking and that you want a show of good faith in the form of a voucher for a future stay.
• Write a letter. If you do get sent away from a hotel due to overbooking then you should make sure to let the management know through a letter that you’re not pleased with the situation.
• Add comments to community review sites. It’s worth it to add your two cents and experience to sites like Yelp. Hotels that get frequent complaints about overbooking will stop having people book with them and they will have to fix their ways.
• You can sue the hotel. If the hotel does not help to remedy the situation and you have to pay out of pocket for new lodging then you may be able to get your money back by filing a claim in small claims court. Your agreement to get a room is a legally binding contract that the hotel must be held to.

Get your pets into San Francisco hotels.

Pet friendly hotels can be tough to find and with limited choices. After our last trip to San Francisco – we built this list of some of the best pet-friendly hotels in San Francisco. We got tired of accepting whatever hotel would take us with our dog and cat – no matter how small or well-behaved. After some more detailed research – we built this list of GREAT hotels that will be a fun place for you and all your pets. Don’t hesitate to write on other hotels or pet-friendly (or unfriendly) experiences you’ve had around San Francisco. In a way – all pet owners help to set the standard of how we treat hotels with our pets. Like an outdoor hike – our motto is to leave things better than when we came – as if there was no pet at all.

Hotel Parking in San Francisco North of $45?

Hotwire users are reporting finding out the hard way that a hotel can charge more for parking than they may have paid Hotwire for their hotel room. It’s also a great ad for cabs and public transit in San Francisco. Among other downtown hotels, the Sir Francis Drake hotel in San Francisco is charging $46 per day for parking. If you win this hotel on Priceline or Hotwire – you may want to leave your car at home.

Very Best Eight Hotels in San Francisco

We’ve compiled our favorite eight San Francisco luxury hotels, when money is no object. These are great, luxurious hotels with excellent service that have been featured on our site for many years. Each hotel is summarized with why it might be your best choice, plus linked to our detailed review and discount hotel reservations. Please leave comments at these hotels on the experiences you’ve had – every review helps our community to have even more amazing trips to San Francisco. These are stack-ranked, in order — the best hotels in San Francisco from the editors of sfTravel.

1. Four Seasons Hotel – San Francisco
2. The Palace Hotel
3. W Hotel San Francisco
4. The Clift Hotel
5. Westin Saint Francis
6. Fairmont San Francisco
7. Intercontinental Mark Hopkins
8. Hyatt Regency at Embarcadero Center

San Francisco Hotel Prices Are Down by 25%.

Hotwire research by city shows that most hotel rates are down 25%-30% from the same month last year. This is a huge drop and it is giving much better prices for San Francisco hotels that we are seeing at all of our reviewed properties. You can check reviews and information on San Francisco hotels at sfTravel.

San Francisco Downtown Hotels for $75 or Less

Covering the San Francisco hotel industry, we see a lot of prices North of $200, and even “bargains” in the $150 range. When we saw our readers increasingly booking a basic, value hotel – we wanted to share it.

The Opal Hotel is right on Van Ness in San Francisco and thankfully a bit away from the Union Square tourist traps. Its a basic, older hotel – but with good quality rooms and service. Right now – they are regularly selling rooms for under $75 and we expect that to continue with the US recession.

Check out Opal Hotel and their ridiculously low rates.

Save Huge Travel Dollars: Predict Your Priceline Hotels.

If you want amazing deals on hotels, without getting just “cheap hotels” – Priceline is an interesting tool. Priceline has great deals, but you don’t know what hotel you’re going to get with the “blind” bidding process. A number of sites help you narrow down these predictions and even understand the general level of bidding prices on Priceline for a given market. The sites have been around for years, but exist “undercover” since they move into a grey area of subverting the channel segmentation that allows Priceline to offer excess hotel inventory at lower prices. We’ve used the sites and saved regularly 65% or more from the posted hotel rates at major brand hotels including Marriott and Doubletree. Check it out for your next trip – if you can take a bit of randomness with your hotel selection – Priceline “prediction” sites help to narrow that down considerably and set the lowest possible bid.

Priceline Predictor Site

One Dollar Hotel Rooms in San Francisco – No Joke.

The Orchard Hotel in San Francisco is offering one room per night, beginning on April 1st, 2009 for just one dollar. Yup, a hotel room at a very nice hotel for just a buck. The catch is there is only one per night, you’ll need to call them (call very early in the morning!!!), and there is only one “One Dollar” room per night.

San Francisco hotel prices have been falling with the recession, but a one dollar hotel room is unheard of. Get it if you can. The phone number for this unheard of deal is (415) 362-8878. Operators are standing by!

If the rooms are gone – here’s a good hotel for under $75 which our readers are snapping up – the Opal Hotel in San Francisco.

Get Away to Sausalito – Goodbye Army — Hello Green Luxury Hotel

Cavallo Point hotel and spa has arrived in Sausalito and is an incredible new option in enjoying the relaxing environment of Sausalito and the San Francisco area.  Converting the former Sausalito Army base into luxury hotel rooms has been a labor of love for the new hotel.  Guests are raving about the comfort, luxury, and reasonable convenience into the city.  For a relaxing vacation – Sausalito’s Cavallo Point is an amazing alternative to the City’s hustle and bustle.

San Francisco’s Hottest New Hotel: The Intercontinental is Open.

The InterContinental San Francisco is an amazing tower of translucent cool-blue glass windows. The Intercontinental tower’s 32 stories are above the vibrant South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood, and is fast becoming a stunning San Francisco landmark. As the first new hotel in over two decades, it isn’t surprising that InterContinental San Francisco is creating a buzz among both locals and tourists.

Located right next to Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco’s luxury Intercontinental is in an excellent location for both business and fun in San Francisco. With excellent business convenience to Moscone conferences and conventions – the Intercontinental is also within easy walking distance of premium shopping areas—including the famed Westfield San Francisco Center, trendy and upscale restaurants / nightclubs, and several excellent tourist attractions including the Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center.

Check out our full review of the Intercontinental Hotel – San Francisco’s amazing new hotel landmark.