[tobynow]

Oh connecting rooms wasn’t a show stopper. That’s why we booked the hotel but we said we’d take any other rooms at any hotel with a working lift, or at that hotel lower down.

The hotel was fully booked though and their staff elevator was also out of action.

Aston100, yeah maybe we should have done that with the buggy. My concern was what about the late night / early morning buggy adventures with a sleeping child – the likelihood of our sleep averse baby staying alseep seems higher in a lift (Vs me carrying her up stairs).

Can2, thanks. I hear you. I’m less angry now! Thanks

[tobynow]

Circling back to my 4th question though — are there any groups/chains people feel are better at handling things when there are issues?

[tobynow]

Lol. Rui N! In in fine shape, thanks for your concern.

My main priority at this stage of life is ensuring my children and wife get sleep, and not having a working lift would have impeded that and caused a variety of headaches. But there we are. Sorry I asked! Didn’t imagine we’d end up taking about my fitness. 😄😄

[tobynow]

This is all helpful thanks.

It wasn’t mentioned on TripAdvisor when I booked, but tbh I didn’t check again in the weeks before we visited so may have missed it.

On the buggy — I know some will think it’s unreasonable. The problem is the buggy with the baby in it is not light (esp with all bags etc). It’s fine to lift up a few steps at the station etc, but I didn’t feel it was doable as we’d have had to go up/down a number of times due to outings, dinner, and naps/sleep. (The baby sometimes sleeps better at night in the buggy. And then we transfer her into the cot. But that relies on me being able to smoothly get her to the cot.)

So it sounds like I should just put up a TripAdvisor review warning other families and accept the accor points and move on!

[tobynow]

Such a nightmare! Thanks SamG

That’s very interesting about them being marketing engines. We’re hotel.com gold and have always found them fantastic when we’ve had issues (including a hotel entirely losing our booking). So maybe we should just stick with rhem..

And on Premier Inn — that’s basically what we were aiming for. Premier Inn style reliability for the travel days.

Can2 – thanks that’s helpful. I think we’ll try Hilton in future.

[tobynow]

Oh and perhaps the better question

4) Which hotel group is more reliable than Accor? When traveling with tiny kids you really don’t want this nonsense. I don’t mind things going wrong, I do mind how hard it was to find a solution and how powerless and defensive their customer support has been. So if anyone has found others more reliable I’d love to know!

[tobynow]

If you call to book a BA holiday, and attempt to pay with a flight only voucher they may….offer to take payment via credit card and refund your FTV to the original payment card associated with it. YMMV but it worked for me. Refund takes a few weeks to arrive.

[tobynow]

This happens to me all the time. Try not to worry.

In most cases it’s because we fly with an infant and the airport team take control of the seats.

But, if you’re on an avios ticket and the flight is no longer in sale you may be bumped. If so, do update us.

[tobynow]

Thank you all! I suppose the best way to view this is: while it’s a bit annoying it’s better than facing lots of disruption.

I’ll have a look at the day before and day after to double check if there is anything we can make work.

Really appreciate the speedy advice from this group.

[tobynow]

That’s all super helpful, thanks.

I’ll wait for their callback and wait to see what they say.

We’re not committed to cancel, but life has slightly got in the way of this trip so I’m pondering just cancelling and rebooking for another period in a few months. But if that’s not possible that’s OK. It’s just a bit annoying that they email saying ‘call to discuss options’ and when I get through there aren’t any options!

[tobynow]

I’ve got this too, the email says if I’m not happy with this there are “options” if I call up.

Does anyone know how flexible they’re likely to be? We’d actually consider moving back 4-6 weeks (but there isn’t avios availability by on the dates we want right now).

[tobynow]

To dare is to do wrote:

What about adding a car or hotel for 5 nights turning it into a BA holiday and take advantage of the double up tier points promotion?

Yeah, I looked at that but it makes it a lot more expensive.

ChrisC wrote:

90 is indeed close.

Do you want to be silver before your LAS trip for lounge access etc?

If you are then there are options to get 90 TPs that would be reasonably cheap if you’re up for it.

Now, that’s an idea. Thanks 🙂

[tobynow]

I need 90 by June to get Silver. Good idea for JFK. I’ll look into this. Happy to try AMS, that is also a good tip. Thanks!