[Penguicon-Concom] RE: concom Digest, Vol 25, Issue 11

[john guest]

I'm tending to agree with letting the Hotel make amends.  This was
their screw up.  In the past when this has happened to me (fairly
frequently in NYC) I've been compensated with free room stays, or limo
service, or an upgraded room for my next stay, etc.  So, yeah, the
hotel needs to cough up for overbooking.

What this is going to result in is that the last few latecomers on
Friday and Saturday are going to be displaced.   Lora and Melissa have
been mentioning the Somerset Inn which is a comparable hotel about
three miles away (Assuming that there isn't any space left at the
Embassy).

Now, from a pure procedural point of view, the block closed when it
was full, like it was supposed to.  What happened then is that clever
folks called Hilton corporate and book rooms through them.  I think a
few folks also booked through the front desk, but I don't expect a
desk drone to know that standard procedure didn't apply in our case --
they were just following corporate policy.  Which brings us back to
the first paragraph.

My only recommendation at this point is that if there is anyone who
absolutely needs to be at the hotel, that they check in earlier rather
than later on Friday.

--John Guest


On 4/12/07, Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 April 2007 11:19 pm, Brendan Durrett wrote:
> > That is not a completely unreasonable question in response to the people who
> > are booked for the weekend.  But if anyone is booked for Saturday only,
> > they're not going to get a room in the Hilton, because nobody is going to
> > check out on Saturday morning, and we're going to be sold out Friday night.
> > (Especially since we're overbooked.)
>
> _We_ are not overbooked.  We did not overbook.  The hotel did.  All by itself.
> We are not the hotel.
>
> The hotel either can't count or knowningly sold rooms it knew it didn't have.
> This is the hotel's mess, and the hotel needs to fix it.
>
> > We are going to bring down the number of weekend (Fri & Sat) over-bookings
> > probably to one or two and hope that someone doesn't show up.  But hoping
> > that someone checks out on Saturday is just unreasonable.
>
> No, this is saturday night and saturday's the big day.  It's possible that
> somebody will stay until around 11 pm saturday and then head home because
> they have nothing to stay for sunday.  (Not likely, but a 2% chance means 2
> people out of 100...)
>
> > So for those
> > people, it's pretty unlikely they'll have a room at all.
>
> It's also not our problem.  It's the hotel's problem.  We can happily help a
> guest be indignant at the hotel and try to do what we can when the hotel
> actually makes a mess, but we are not a codependent enabler for this hotel.
> They won't learn unless they experience consequences.
>
> There's also the possibility that their weird statistical approach will
> actually work because somebody misses their plane or comes down with the flu
> and doesn't show.  No point worrying about it now.
>
> > >Jackie Wuertz is my brother's Signifiant Other, so I'm guessing that's my
> > >brother's room.  They're coming for the wedding and bits of con.  (Dunno
> > >the
> > >other two.)
> > >
> > >Rob
> >
> > More importantly, will they mind if the Hilton moves him to another hotel?
> > Do you know?
>
> Yes, they will probably mind if they specifically booked at the con hotel
> instead of a much cheaper motel at half the price.  This is probably true of
> all our guests.
>
> Rob
> --
> Penguicon 5.0 Apr 20-22, Linux Expo/SF Convention.  Bruce Schneier, Christine
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