hotels.com | a cautionary tale

Internet booking engines have their place, especially if you are shopping for economy or moderate hotels. They are a quick and easy way to price out a variety of properties in a given destination and make a booking. They are fine until things go wrong, which they sometimes do, and it becomes difficult if not impossible to get a live human being to spend the time necessary to get your problem resolved.

The following is a true story reported to me by an actual hotels.com customer about an experience that caused her days of distress. I am telling this story with her permission - but fictionalizing her name.

Susan wanted to book two connecting waterfront rooms (king + double-double) at a particular five-star resort for her family's vacation over Easter weekend. Unfortunately, she was informed by the resort that the room configuration she needed was not available. Not being one to give up so easily, Susan tenaciously began searching the web for alternatives and found a website that seemed to offer exactly what she wanted at the same resort.

Phoning the toll-free number, the agent in the call center assured Susan she could definitely get those connecting rooms. The agent put Susan on hold, phoned the hotel's reservations department, then reported back to Susan with the wonderful news that "Julie in reservations" had exactly the connecting rooms she was looking for. However, the rooms had to be booked immediately or they would be gone. Susan provided her credit card number to the agent, and the reservation was made.

Susan then called "Julie in reservations" herself, just to verify her arrangements. That's where everything fell apart. Her requests had not been confirmed. Susan definitely did not have the connecting waterfront rooms she had requested. She immediately phoned hotels.com to cancel her reservation. Hotels.com did so and then informed her that she would have to pay a 50% cancellation fee. Susan was understandably very upset and asked over the course of many phone calls to speak with a hotels.com supervisor who could help, but she reports that no one ever called her back.

This is when Susan contacted me (she found me on the web). My agency has a long-standing preferred relationship with the resort involved here, and I spoke directly with the reservations manager. This is a company that wants to take great care of their guests, and they were more than happy to waive any cancellation fees under these circumstances. The resort instructed hotels.com to refund the customer's money.

Is there a moral to this story? Booking engines and call center agents can make hotel reservations, but travel consultants do so much more. Hotels and travel consultants have the same goal in mind — to do everything in our power to ensure that information is communicated accurately, that guests are treated warmly, and that they enjoy a perfect stay. This doesn't always happen, Susan's story being an example of how things sometimes go wrong. Beyond the amenities that a luxury travel consultant can offer (complimentary daily breakfasts, room upgrades, and more), we work for you - even to help you solve a problem caused by an online booking engine.

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copyright (c) 2010 by David Ourisman LLC. All rights reserved. If you have comments on this column, or questions about booking travel, email me or visit my website.
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