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Interesting… Had a stay booked at the IC Doha Beach for a few weeks time. Was in the IHG app last night and no booking showing.
Dug out the confirmation numbers, plugged them in and hey ho, “no booking exists”
Get on to IHG, they tell me the booking has been cancelled by the hotel and I need to pick this up with the hotel directly.
Currently waiting for them to respond. Still availability at the hotel at sensible prices.
Now, part of the booking was for an AMB weekend free night, and I don’t currently have AMB status. The intention was to buy that in the coming weeks. As I understand it, that’s a smart idea & perfectly legitimate. Am I wrong?
Also seems very very bad that they didn’t even send me an automated e-mail to advise they had cancelled the booking in the first place.
Any thoughts/observations?
IHG shouldn’t be telling you to go direct to the hotel is my first thought.
Is the hotel still taking bookings for that period.
IHG shouldn’t be telling you to go direct to the hotel is my first thought.
Is the hotel still taking bookings for that period.
I agree – it seemed very odd that the (live, not AI) agent on the chat function wanted to palm me off to the hotel directly. And the hotel is still taking bookings, including offering a 3 for 2 rate that might save a couple of quid vs buying the AMB status.
My gut feel is the hotel decided because I didn’t have AMB status (yet), I was gaming the system, so cancelled my bookings. But even if they do that, surely it would make sense to issue the normal cancellation e-mail.
IHG shouldn’t be telling you to go direct to the hotel is my first thought.
Is the hotel still taking bookings for that period.
The IHG agent is actually giving sensible and correct advice. IHG is simply acting as an OTA in this transaction which can only be resolved by the hotel so the customer is much better off dealing with them directly.
Unfortunately quite a lot of changes or (auto) cancellations made directly by hotels or airlines aren’t executed in a manner that triggers notifications, although of course they should.
I don’t know that you’re officially allowed to book the Ambassador free night while you’re not actually in the programme, just that it’s always been possible. IHG IT can be a bit flaky, but the hotel may have picked up on this.
I don’t know that you’re officially allowed to book the Ambassador free night while you’re not actually in the programme, just that it’s always been possible. IHG IT can be a bit flaky, but the hotel may have picked up on this.
That may be the case, but why on earth cancel the one night at rack rate as well (separate booking), and why not email me to say “you don’t qualify, you need to remedy”. As I said the hotel has vacancies, is running a 3-4-2 anyway and presumably could have also won by selling me the AMB membership.
Worst case scenario would be I turn up without an AMB membership and they charge me rack rate for breaching the terms in the same way as trying to use a corporate discount that you don’t qualify for.
(I was expecting to have heard back from them by now, too…)
Indirectly related to this, it’s quite scary what hotels can do to bookings in the IHG central system without any notification being generated.
After a few schedule changes, I recently ended up with two consecutive bookings at a US hotel, 2 nights + 1 night, so I emailed the hotel to confirm I would be with them for three nights and would obviously like to keep the same room. They replied to say that they had cancelled the second booking and amended the first to include the third night at the same cost (much lower than the prevailing rate at the time), all without me getting anything from IHG land.
@The-real-Swiss-Tony – in my experience ME and Asian hotels/airlines are very punctilious in checking for non-conforming reservations, partly because they employ more staff as they are relatively less expensive in those regions. Your cancellation looks as though it must have been carried out by a human.
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