hotel doesnt have accomodation yet booking.com has

mengele

was looking at staying in a certain hotel for a few nights from tomorrow. a very last minute holiday.

Booking.com has one room left for the said nights yet the hotels own site doesnt? If i booked trough booking.com is there likely to be a room there when i turn up or not?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Hotels reserve a number of rooms for the likes of booking.com

vicwatson

Book with booking.com?

mengele

vicwatson wrote: »

Book with booking.com?

i would but i just wanted to make sure that the room they were offering actually existed. it seemed funny how hotels own site said they were fully booked

McMurphy

Will the OP book with booking.com and find out later there's no actual room for him/her?

Or will the OP realise that booking.com perhaps block book hotel rooms which they then try and sell, hence the room/no room statuses in the hotel/book.com sites.

I'm staying tuned to.find out how this one evolves.

/subscribes to thread.

This could be an all nighter tbh.

eoins23456

just use booking.com. You pay for the hotel room outright usually before you stay so you'll definitely have it

CeilingFly

Ring them - booking.com take 15-20% commission.

Hotel may do better price by phone and they'll be able to confirm the room.

As above, some rooms are set aside for booking.com but the hotel fully controls it and can change availability on the spot.

Most hotel own booking systems are also outsourced.

CeilingFly

Rick Shaw wrote: »

Or will the OP realise that booking.com perhaps block book hotel rooms which they then try and sell, hence the room/no room statuses in the hotel/book.com sites.
.

Booking.com is just a booking system and the availability is fully controlled by the hotel

Hotels.com are a block booker and can have availability when other sites / hotel site says sold out.

juicyduckie

Booking.com are given an allocation of rooms from each hotel.

If the room is displayed on Booking.com then the hotel is obliged to honour that booking.

HOWEVER - on a bank holiday weekend such as this I would call the hotel directly to enquire, as they may still be fully booked notwithstanding this allocation, and you could end up as an 'overbooking' which would just be awkward. In this case, it does depend on the hotel - if they are 5 star usually you will be very much looked after, if they are 4 or 3 star you may not be so well accommodated. (excuse the pun)

Around Asia, I've turned up at hotels many times and been forced to use Agoda to book it. It's always cheaper as well but hotels are understandably firm on not letting anything interfere with their online bookings.

Nitrogan

Deleted User wrote: »

I've turned up at hotels many times and been forced to use Agoda to book it.

I've had to book a room online from the reception desk of a half empty hotel before, because they were 'full'. The hotel staff were completely straight faced about the whole thing which just sent me into a fit of giggles. A surreal experience.

Back in 2004 I booked a hotel directly with the hotel. When I arrived the hotel apologised and said they'd overbooked and that legally they had to supply me with alternative accommodation of an equal standard.

So they sent me to a decidely less popular hotel owned by the same hotel group. As it is impossible in a time of computerised hotel bookings for a hotel to be "overbooked" this was clearly hotel policy: the popular hotel was intentionally overbooking itself in order to give business to less popular hotels in the group. No way would I have chosen to stay in that other hotel. I checked at the time and this was both common practice and legal.

Hopefully the EU (it happened in Prague, not Ireland) has made this illegal since.

CeilingFly

Nitrogan wrote: »

I've had to book a room online from the reception desk of a half empty hotel before, because they were 'full'. The hotel staff were completely straight faced about the whole thing which just sent me into a fit of giggles. A surreal experience.

That can happen especially in off peak times.

Hotel will have a certain number of staff / supplies for their estimated business with some buffer put in.

So a 100 room hotel may only have 50 rooms available for a Tuesday nighr and their front of house system will say no rooms available.


In some cases (probably your scenario) a block booker like hotels.com may not have sold all the rooms they bought. But as hotels.com have bought the rooms the hotel can't sell them themselves as they are paid for.

So the hotel has sold all the rooms, yet a few are unoccupied. - Kind of like a "no show" by the block booker

MrPudding

Deleted User wrote: »

As it is impossible in a time of computerised hotel bookings for a hotel to be "overbooked" this was clearly hotel policy: the popular hotel was intentionally overbooking itself in order to give business to less popular hotels in the group. No way would I have chosen to stay in that other hotel. I checked at the time and this was both common practice and legal.

Hopefully the EU (it happened in Prague, not Ireland) has made this illegal since.

I would not be so sure the purpose was to drive booking to a less popular group member, that may simply be a happy coincidence.

I used to work in a popular hotel in Northern Ireland. We never overbooked, but I remember talking to a Dublin Hotel when trying to book accommodation for a couple of our guests. The manager I was speaking to was in a bit of a panic as he had 20 more booking than he had rooms for. They had a policy of overbooking their rooms by about 15% as that was roughly their rate of no-shows. Usually this worked ok, but on this particular occasion they were full and still had people with bookings turning up.

I think some hotels did (not sure if they still do) use a similar policy to the airlines and intentionally overbook to maximise occupancy.

MrP

splinter65

Rick Shaw wrote: »

Will the OP book with booking.com and find out later there's no actual room for him/her?

Or will the OP realise that booking.com perhaps block book hotel rooms which they then try and sell, hence the room/no room statuses in the hotel/book.com sites.

I'm staying tuned to.find out how this one evolves.

/subscribes to thread.

This could be an all nighter tbh.

Come back after the break when we’ll be speaking to the assistant duty manager of the hotel to get his view on this breaking story....