UK: Hotel rang me up to say they can't offer a room

Chris_5339762

I know this is an Irish forum and all but it seems to be the best place to find information about anything like this!

Last week I did a road trip around Wales and England. Six different hotels. All were booked well in advance, some were big chain hotels with full prepayment but one, a privately owned hotel, I only had to pay a 25% deposit on. This was done, by Visa Debit. Room secured by phone, (but no confirmation sent via email).

All grand until I was in Wales, running an event for the day that I was staying at this hotel. I get a phone call from the hotel. They tell me, quite matter of factly, that they will not be able to offer me the room for tonight, that it is not available. I query why and state my discontent for this, but am just told quite briskly, that the room is not available, they cannot offer it to me and that my deposit will be returned. I prevaricate, and the long and the short is that they find me a room in a hotel about 20 miles away, which was all fine and a nice enough place to stay in the end. Lucky I had a car, as they showed no intention of getting me to this new hotel or anything like that.

My deposit was returned a few days later.

Where do I stand with this? As I've said they rebooked me into another hotel a significant distance away. All my friends were staying in the offending hotel, so I had to leave them for the final night of the holiday while they all tried out the beers from the on-site brewery. I felt a bit hard done by.

Whilst I don't think I'm entitled to anything, I want to make sure what they've done is not allowed before I blast them via a formal complaint and via Tripadvisor. I fully intend to go down this route as its not really good enough.

Now, I did find out from my new hotel that a third hotel in the town had gone into administration that morning and all guests were booted out. I SUSPECT they kicked me out of my double room to accommodate a couple but had they just simply told me that, instead of just kicking me out wholesale without an explanation (just a 'get out' basically), I'd have been happy enough to relocate.

Anyone any advice on the legality of this (bear in mind its in Wales so may be different to home), as to whether I'm entitled to anything, or whether I should just 'put up and shut up'??

Thanks a mil.

Kaylami

I'm not too sure in Wales but here hotels will frequently over book and then "walk guests" so much so that they do training in it.

The procedure would be the hotel covers the difference between the room you booked and the hotel they booked for you so you pay the same cost.

If you had paid a deposit though it shouldn't have been you that was moved. Generally bookings with no deposit & a low rate will be moved.

Definitely send a email to the manager saying everything you have said here and see what their response is.

Just saw now that no email confirmation was sent. That seems to me the reservation was not put on the system.

coylemj

Kaylami wrote: »

Just saw now that no email confirmation was sent. That seems to me the reservation was not put on the system.

The hotel rang the OP to say there was no room so it was on the system all right....

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I get a phone call from the hotel. They tell me, quite matter of factly, that they will not be able to offer me the room for tonight, that it is not available.

I suspect that one of their regular customers looked for a room at the last minute and they made a tactical decision to bump the OP.

looksee

More likely that a couple were looking for a room for two or three nights and the OP's was the easiest to juggle.