3rd party site is booking what?!

[bhskittykatt]

I've seen a lot of 3rd party hotel booking sites screw up what sorts of room types or amenities a hotel has (all of them have done it at some point or another). But this is the first time I've seen one screw up this badly.

A certain third party site (who shall remain nameless but I'm sure other CSers in the industry can take a pretty damn good guess) is advertising super ridiculously-low rates for our hotel. And a guest booked through them for our hotel. And she got a shiny little confirmation number and everything.

Except there was a problem. Her reservation didn't show up in our system. Because we don't have a contract with this company. At all. We don't want one. And we are certainly not booking rooms that cheaply.

We went to their website and sure enough, I can book a room at my hotel for nearly half what I should be able to. It will allow me to do it. Except I really can't, because the reservation will never show up in our system because we don't work with the company in question.

The website says "3 others just booked this hotel!". I always suspected those numbers to be inflated, and I seriously hope they are now.

Fortunately for the guest, we had a room for her. (If she had come in yesterday, she probably would have been screwed!) At least the company did not take any money directly from her, just made her a completely bogus booking. Otherwise she'd have to fight to get her money back from them.

All calls to said company have so far been fruitless. They just keep shuffling us around to various general customer service agents and don't send us to anyone who has the authority to fix things. It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days.

[eltf177]

Sounds like its past time your lawyers contact their lawyers and explain the fact that there's like, NO CONTRACT IN PLACE HERE!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Sounds like there may be some smackdown being laid out in the future to Oblivious Third Party Booking.

[Pixilated]

I agree that it's time to dispense with the Customer Service calls and get the lawyers involved. I'm not sure what the company's getting out of this, since they take no money directly, but they can no longer claim they don't know what's going on, and they're obviously not interested in fixing it, so ... time to bring in the big guns.

[wolfie]

It's my understanding that your hotel was renovated after a change in ownership. Is there the possibility that the previous owners had a contract with the 3rd party site? That could explain their taking bookings - they're assuming that their contract is continuing, and that the hotel is "asleep at the switch" by failing to put the 3rd party reservations into the hotel's reservation system.

[Victory Sabre]

Your higher ups could also consider contacting the BBB.

[mhkohne]

I don't normally say this, but your lawyers need to get involved, stat. They'll be able to use words like 'fraud' and 'damages' to get the other company's attention right quick.

If it's not an 'old contract' mistake like wolfie theorized, then I'm guessing that some salesweasel decided to pad his commission one month.

[greensinestro]

Once I saw your quote "three others just booked this hotel", I knew which site you were referring to.

Lately, I've found booking through the actual hotel's website is cheaper than through the not aforementioned web site here. $10 per might savings goes a long way, such as putting it toward breakfast at McDonald's.

[Sunshine]

Due to stories thru from this site i no longer book third party. Id rather talk to the hotel directly

[Ophbalance]

Due to stories thru from this site i no longer book third party. Id rather talk to the hotel directly

Same here. In fact, did that this past weekend and it worked out $10 cheaper.

[bhskittykatt]

It's my understanding that your hotel was renovated after a change in ownership. Is there the possibility that the previous owners had a contract with the 3rd party site? That could explain their taking bookings - they're assuming that their contract is continuing, and that the hotel is "asleep at the switch" by failing to put the 3rd party reservations into the hotel's reservation system.

That's the only thing I can think of. Though, we were closed for over 8 months in between owners. You would think that long a closure would be enough for them to figure things out.

The Resort is a completely new company now, and the new management wants nothing to do with this particular 3rd party booking site. This latest f**k-up is definitely not endearing them to anyone.

[Mel]

I might search online for hotels, and my searches might lead me to 3rd party booking sites, but once I find a hotel and rate that interest me, I will look for that hotel's website and book through them. Most of the time, there's not much difference, if any, in rates.

[MoonCat]

Time for a "cease and desist" letter.

Oh, and a large, colorful warning on your hotel's website warning people that they should not book their room through that third party site because they do NOT have authorization to book rooms for you.

[bhskittykatt]

Third Party Site has been contacted. They say they'll take care of it, but it could "take a week" before our listing finally goes away. Ugh.

On the plus side, generally searching for hotels in our area won't bring us up. You have to specifically search for our resort through them. So hopefully that will keep our listing at least slightly hidden until it finally is taken completely off.

[ComputerNecromancer]

Your higher ups could also consider contacting the BBB.

Why? It's not like the BBB has any *power* to do anything. All they can do is give them outfit a bad rating. Which doesn't do a damn thing unless people check the rating before using them.