More examples

Going on vacation seems to give me plenty of ammunition for these notes.  The following example of what not to do is based on a conversation with the Day Manager at the Sandman Inn in Calgary West.

My wife and I needed to go to Calgary to drop our kids off with her sister.  They were going to horse riding camp for the week and we thought we'd start it off early by going to a hotel when we got there instead of sleeping at sister's place.  On the Friday before we went we reserved a room at the Calgary West Sandman Inn through the Sandman web site.  We got a room with a King sized bed and, most importantly, a confirmation number.

When we got to the inn on Saturday, however, we were surprised because they did not have the room that we reserved.  They had a room in the same "class", but they did not have any rooms with King sized beds.  I was a little surprised because I thought a confirmation from the hotel chain guaranteed the room was available.  I was told by the clerk at the front desk that the Sandman web site and the computer system at the hotel do not talk to each other.  And that they had been trying all day to get hold of someone to have the web site stop booking rooms.

I was, quite frankly, amazed at this revelation.  Imagine building a reservation system for a hotel chain, but not hooking it into the hotels reservation system!  So what did I do?  Well, there was nothing to do about the room as there were supposedly no other rooms in the hotel.  (They did give me a $3.00 discount for my inconvenience.  The pop in the pop machine was $2.50)  When I got to the room I immediately hooked up to their Internet connection and went to the Sandman web site and filled out a form with a complaint.

After waiting 5 days for a response I called the 1-800 number for reservations.  I got the Manager of Reservations and she was going to call the Calgary West Sandman to see what the scoop was.  Three days later I got a call from the Day Manager.  She confirmed that the systems do not talk to each other and that in order to get the web site to stop reserving rooms the general manager has to fill out a form and send it in.  (He only works 9 - 5 on weekdays, so if something needs to be done outside of this timeframe, oh well.)  By the way, the 1-800 line uses the same system the web site does, so that does not guarantee you the room either.  You need to talk to the hotel itself.  Same thing is to be said with regard to Expedia or Travelocity.

So what do we have?  A hotel chain with thirty five properties that reserves rooms without actually knowing whether or not the room is available and a form based system that is required to be filled out to stop selling rooms.  Does anyone see a problem here?  As I escalate this problem up the Sandman management tree I'll let you know if this is going to be changed.  If not, unless you call the hotel directly, don't bother reserving a room with Sandman.