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If you have a reservation for a hotel that is supposed to be reopening in the weeks before you’re due to arrive, I suggest you double-check the property’s latest information online and make sure that all is still going according to plan. Based on my experience, some hotels are not very good at informing guests that their reservations can no longer be honored in a timely way.
Example 1
Joanna and I were supposed to be staying at the Langley near Heathrow in the middle of September with the property scheduled to open at the beginning of the month. I had booked a 2-night stay with the free night certificates from my Ritz-Carlton credit card and my Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant credit card and all appeared to be going to plan until, by chance, I decided to check the cash rates for the nights we were due to stay (I wanted to make sure that the rates hadn’t dropped low enough to make the use of the free night certificates uneconomical). There was no availability for any of the hotel’s room types.
Considering we’re living through a pandemic this seemed odd and when I searched for availability on other dates the same issue arose – no availability. At the time, there was no notice on the hotel’s website to indicate anything was up and our reservations were still showing as active in my online account, but it was abundantly clear that the hotel would not be opening in time for our visit. This was something the Bonvoy Twitter team was happy to confirm.
I’m not sure when the decision was taken not to reopen the Langley at the beginning of September but considering I had just spent 4 nights in another London Marriott property using cash, I was a little annoyed that the hotel’s new opening date had not been communicated to me promptly (the property ended up emailing me almost a week later) as I could have used the two certificates from the Langley to pay for two of the nights in London.
Example 2
I’ve currently got a reservation at the London InterContinental Park Lane for 12 September with the booking having been made towards the end of July when the hotel’s opening date was set for either 1 or 3 September (I can’t remember which).
I’ve just checked my reservation online and had I not been paying close attention I may not have realized that there’s an issue. The property is still “looking forward to [my] stay” and there’s no sign that the reservation has been cancelled, but under the “Important Announcements” paragraph the property is now showing a reopening date that’s a week after I’m due to stay.
I’ve not had an email from IHG or the property to say that my stay can’t be honored (check-in is supposed to be in a little over 2 week’s time) so had I not checked IHG.com I wouldn’t know that my reservation is void.
Fortunately, I had a feeling that the InterContinental may pull something like this so I have a back-up reservation elsewhere ready to save the day, but this doesn’t take away from the fact that this is another example of a hotel not being very good at communicating when its plans change and a guest’s reservation can no longer be honored.
Is it really that hard to send out a batch of cancellation emails once a decision has been taken to move a hotel’s reopening date?
Bottom Line
If you have a reservation for a property that hasn’t yet reopened I suggest you keep a close eye on the property’s website to make sure that the opening date hasn’t been pushed back – you may well discover that your reservation is void long before the property gets around to letting you know itself.
