The Wyndham Garden Dover hotel canceled rooms that had been booked for a year on Sunday morning, just days before the event.
Some guests received messages stating they had canceled the bookings themselves. Others were told their payment hadn’t gone through, even for non-prepaid rooms. Still others were informed that the hotel was overbooked and wouldn’t honor their reservation.
Complaining customers were told to write in, but the hotel ignored the messages. Some who managed to speak with someone were told that the hotel had bookings they needed to honor for Air Force guests (that they somehow didn’t know about earlier). Meanwhile, hotels were charging three times more than usual. Those bookings, apparently, were being honored.
Wyndham corporate directed guests back to the hotel. People sometimes mistakenly assume they’re customers of the chain when:
"Hotel owners are the customers."
"Guests are the product."
Hotel owners sometimes refer to loyalty members as “leads” or prospects to market rooms to.
This practice is hardly unusual. Hotels cancel guest reservations when they can sell rooms for more during events like an NFL draft or a solar eclipse or a big college graduation.
Sometimes hotels resell rooms and are honest about what they’ve done. That’s happened multiple times (a Westin and an Alila). Here’s how to avoid getting walked when a hotel is oversold.
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