The Back Story
My wife and I have recently started going to New Orleans every year. We love the food, the architecture, the culture…we love it all!
A few weeks ago, we were scheduled to go to New Orleans. We like staying in the French Quarter, but we aren’t really party people, so we sought to expand the location of where we are staying. My wife suggested looking in the Garden District, as we love walking up and down St. Charles Avenue and Magazine Street (lots of great dining and antique stores).
I looked through listings in the Big 4 Hotel Chains to see if they had any interesting hotels at what I consider reasonable prices.
There’s a Hampton Inn with fine reviews, but they wanted 250k points for 4 nights (NOT WORTH IT). There also happened to be a Hotel Indigo Garden District (link was from when I originally wrote this post and no longer works) with great reviews, right on St. Charles street, and, as a IHG Rewards Traveler Credit Card holder (referral link), I get my 4th night free, so I’d be all in for ~100k points. Given that the hotel was going for $200 a night, I consider that a steal for using my IHG points!
I booked the hotel and moved on to figuring out a schedule for us (cemetery tours, restaurants to try, etc.).
On Saturday, March 25th, I was at the movies, and I got a call from this specific Hotel Indigo. I hit silent and continued watching the movies.
After the movie, I listened to the message. They told me that my reservation was getting cancelled as “they are deflagging from IHG and moving to become a Marriott.” Additionally, if I had booked on points (they should know this!), I needed to call IHG to have my points redeposited into my account.
I immediately look at my IHG account and saw that my points had been redeposited. I also did a quick search and found an IHG hotel with great reviews and booked that (got my 4th night free again), although it’s not in the Garden District (ended up having to cancel it). Things had worked out, I guess.
I Am Annoyed
Running a hotel is hard. I’ve never actually done it, but I’ve thought a lot about it, particularly when I travel solo. There are so many things you have to think about: I once read an article about a 1,000+ conference hotel that had shutdown for the pandemic, and when they reopened several months later, they spent multiple days just making sure all the alarm clocks were working!
In spite of this, I’m still really annoyed that this happened for a couple of reasons.
First of all, I’m annoyed because I had a reservation. Why should it matter what brand they are under? If I have a reservation, it should be honored, plain and simple (unless the hotel literally closes).
Second, what if I was checking in a few days for a reservation that went past March 31st, when they are no longer with IHG? This is a multi-million dollar revenue deal between the hotel and the corporate chain, so I would expect that they have known about this for a long time. Calling less than a week before the hotel deflags is unacceptable. Why isn’t their a better process?
It blows my mind that some hotels are willing to throw away reservations just because they deflag. They could have called and said, “Hey, we’re deflagging and changing brands, does that work for you?” If I’m loyal to a specific brand, then I can make the choice to switch hotels. It shouldn’t be thrust upon me!
Third, it was really just the callousness of the whole interaction. Absolutely nothing was done to help me find a new reservation or make me whole. Not from the hotel (who really had nothing to lose) or from corporate.
How Should Hotel Brands Handle This?
Like I said earlier, running a hotel is hard, but corporate really needs to write into contracts procedures on how to handle this. In a parallel universe, this is what I would do:
- The customer comes first. All reservations should be honored. The hotel has an interest in this because it protects their revenue as they deflag and move to another chain or go independent, as rooms are already booked. The chain has an interest in this, as it makes sure that their loyal customers are taken care of (particularly elites).
- Once hotels know that they will no longer be a part of a hotel chain, they should no longer advertise that hotel to accept reservations that leave after the date of deflagging. I know that hotel IT isn’t that great (there is much ink spilt on the web about how to handle the quirks of different websites), but, at a minimum, either chains should remove the hotels after the certain date where the hotel is leaving or require hotels to zero out inventory for those days.
- Points reservations and elite benefits should be honored. When a hotel becomes a part of the chain, there should be standard procedures where all reservations are paid out at a predetermined rate (reflecting the payments hotels would get for points stays anyways) and guarantees should be made for all elite benefits. I know this is really stretching it (and will likely never happen), but if there is a breakfast benefit, possibly even consider giving customers a hotel credit to use in the restaurant if free breakfast doesn’t really work (again, this could be written into the contract).
Conclusion
This situation could have been avoided. While I never ended up making the trip, it was quite frustrating to have to deal with this on my own. IHG really dropped the ball in making this trip easy.
Has this ever happened to you? What would you do in a situation like this?