Travelodge seems to overbook rooms sometimes. – a policy that results in additional costs and suffering and is potentially harmful to vulnerable guests..
I am 77 years old and have paid in advance for a room in Oxford. The hotel manager called me at 22:00 and asked if I still needed him. I confirmed that I would arrive within an hour.
When I got to the reception, I was informed that my room was booked. Five other prepaid guests, including four young women, were told the same thing.
I was rebooked into a Travelodge at a service station 21 miles away. I had to take a taxi and arrived at a remote location at 2am to find the place deserted and the hotel locked. It took a long time before the hotel's front telephone was answered and I was allowed in.
The next morning I had to rebook my train tickets home from Swindon rather than Oxford. Travelodge responded by saying that overbooking was rare.which, judging by online forums, is clearly not true.
I had to spend time sending in receipts to recoup the £63 taxi and train costs and was refunded the £118 room rate but was not offered any compensation. for disaster.
MAG, London
You chose the Oxford Hotel because it was convenient for an evening event you were attending.
Not only did you suffer from the anxiety of being a single woman in a remote location miles away from where you wanted to be, you also lost three hours of the night due to Travelodge's behavior.
It's absurd that the manager didn't tell you about the overbooking when he called you an hour before you tried to check in.
Travelodge told me its terms and conditions warn guests that they may sometimes have to be moved to another hotel, but the company said its policy is not to move single women.
So why were you kicked out?
The reason mysteriously changed when I asked the company questions. Travelodge now claims that “maintenance issues” rather than overbooking made your room uninhabitable. Why weren't you told about this when the manager called and when you came to the reception? Travelodge ignored this issue.
However, he belatedly realized the suffering you had endured and offered you a voucher for a one-night stay so you could venture into another one of his establishments.
J.F. from Leeds, he had an almost identical experience when he tried to check into the Travelodge he had booked in Cardiff city centre. He says he and five other guests were told that some rooms had been “trash” by previous guests and they would have to wait to be moved.
“We felt we were being cheated and believed the rooms were overbooked,” he writes. “That morning the maid knew the rooms were unusable.”
Like MAG, it was eventually sent to another Travelodge – an M4 service station 12 miles from Pontyclun. Unlike MAG, he did not get his money back.
Again, the excuse changed when I asked Travelodge the question. This time they said that due to “technical problems” caused by a water leak, three rooms were destroyed. He apologized for any misunderstanding of the word “garbage” and for not communicating this to JF earlier. He has now, belatedly, apologized and given him a full refund and voucher.
MAG and JF were luckier than they thought. Travelodge client COVERING from London spent the evening hours on the streets of Brighton with the rest of the hotel guests because the staff were unable to turn off the fire alarm. He checked into his £227 room at midnight after a family funeral.
Four hours later, guests were evacuated when the fire alarm sounded. “Most of them were still in their pajamas or underwear,” he wrote. “After half an hour, the manager told us it was a false alarm, but no one knew how to turn it off, so we would have to wait outside for a technician to come.
“Another hour later, some guests were sitting on the beach with towels. Others took refuge in the reception area, although the alarm was so piercingly loud that one teenager began to feel sick.”
Two and a half hours later T.A. I picked up my bags and took the morning train home. He spent less than four hours in bed. His request for a refund for the ruined night earned him a £60 “token apology”.
Following his further complaints, Travelodge paid him an additional £11.99 for the breakfast he never ate and declared their generosity a “fair decision”.
T.A. escalated his complaint and ended up receiving a further £49, leaving him still without money for those four hours' accommodation.
Eventually, when I intervened, he was refunded and given a predictable voucher for a future stay.
“At Travelodge, the safety and well-being of our customers is always our number one priority,” Travelodge says, declining to say whether other affected guests will be reimbursed.
