Find The Boots

Rantings from a few corporate types about life, technology, travel, guns, politics, and everything good in the world.

Hotels Making Your Head Explode

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

I was recently in Italy and had a room reserved at our "premier hotel partner." We're putting around 140K hotel rooms/year through these guys. So you'd think they'd kiss big butt.

Nope. First no non-smoking rooms available. I checked out the smoking room. Anyone here ever fly Turkish Airways back in the old days? Yep.

When I went back downstairs and pushed they gave me a non-smoking room with a single bed. A single. Like a 8 year old would sleep in. So I had to go back down stairs.

I finally got (for me) quite nasty and insistent and threatened to pull my entire group out of the hotel right then and write lots of letters to our corporate travel and their corporate HQ. And then they grudgingly allowed me to upgrade to a junior suite for 50 euro more.

Guess they're trying to be more like the airlines.

From Consumerist comes a similar(ish) tale:

With this type of "No room at the inn" you would think it was the second birth of our Lord and Savior. Though, this unholy reservation, and botched reservation, earns a "Jesus Christ."
Brandon booked a room at the Sheraton Gateway for himself and a colleague on business . Later, he added a room under his name for a third associate. When he
arrived at check in, close to midnight, he found that in altering the reservation, Sheraton accidentally changed the reservation to a week later.
In spite of this being Sheraton's error, they offered no discounts or help
with finding alternate accommodations. "Sorry, we're sold out all this week," the friendly clerks chirped. After further wrangling, the travelers managed to wrest out one room for each of them from the clerks.
When pressed, the check in clerk revealed the reason for the hotel's lack of vacancy. The hotel's president was in and blocked off thirty rooms for the rest of the week. What he planned to do with all those rooms was not clear.

Yep, just like the airlines.

=====update=====

In response to a reader email: of course the upgrade was (probably, cough) contrary to policy. I have no idea if I expensed those boots (cough, cough). Hey, the alternative was to be grumpy and in need of a chiropracter for three days (single bed) or get a sinus infection (smoking room).

I find that if I ask myself: "What would an EVP do?" I usugally get good guidance from above.

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Find The Boots

An executive goes on a business trip. When he arrives, it's raining cats and dogs. To avoid ruining his shoes, he purchases a pair of galoshes for $15, which he expenses under "Misc." on his expense report. A week later, the accounting department rejects his expense report, with a post-it note that says that the company does not reimburse for items of clothing. The next trip, the executive turns in an expense report without the galoshes, but with a post-it note that says "FIND THE BOOTS!".