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4 hours ago
3
It seems Travelodge sometimes overbooks rooms – a policy that causes extra cost and distress and is potentially dangerous for vulnerable guests.
I am 77 and had prepaid for a room in Oxford. The hotel manager called me at 10pm to ask if I still needed it. I confirmed I was arriving within the hour.
When I reached reception, I was informed that my room was overbooked. Five other prepaid guests, including four young women, were told the same.
I was rebooked into a Travelodge at a service station 21 miles away. I was forced to take a cab and arrived at the remote location at 2am to find the place deserted and the hotel locked. It took a long time for the hotel’s entry phone to be answered and for me to be let in.
The next morning, I had to rebook my train home from Swindon instead of Oxford. Travelodge’s response was that overbooking is rare, which from online chat forums is clearly not the case.
I had to spend time sending receipts to recover my £63 cab and train costs, and was refunded the £118 cost of the room, but I have been offered no compensation for the distress.
MAG, London
You had chosen the Oxford hotel because it was handy for an evening event you were attending.
Not only did you suffer the anxiety of being a lone woman in a remote location on a bypass miles from where you wanted to be, you also lost three hours of your night because of Travelodge’s behaviour.
It is nonsensical that the manager did not inform you of 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 occasionally have to be moved to a different hotel, but it said its policy is not to relocate lone women.
So why were you forced out?
The reason mysteriously changed when I questioned the company. Now Travelodge claims that a “maintenance issue”, rather than overbooking, rendered your room uninhabitable. Why were you not told this when the manager called and when you arrived at reception? Travelodge ignored that question.
It did, however, belatedly recognise the distress you had suffered, and offered you a voucher for a one-night stay – so you get to chance another of its establishments.
JF from Leeds had a near-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 a number of rooms had been “trashed” by previous guests and they would have to wait to be relocated.
“We felt we were being lied to and believe the rooms had been overbooked,” he writes. “Housekeeping would have been aware that morning that the rooms were not fit for use.”
Like MAG, he was eventually sent to another Travelodge – at an M4 service station 12 miles away in Pontyclun. Unlike MAG, he was not given a refund.
Again, the excuse changed when I questioned Travelodge. This time, it claimed that a “maintenance issue”, caused by a water leak, had taken out three rooms. It apologised for any misunderstanding of the word “trashed” and for not letting JF know earlier. It has now, belatedly, apologised and given him a full refund and a voucher.
MAG and JF were luckier than they knew. The Travelodge customer TA of London spent the small hours on a Brighton street, along with the rest of the hotel guests, because staff were unable to turn off a fire alarm. He had checked into his £227 room at midnight after a family funeral.
Four hours later, guests were evacuated when the fire alarm sounded. “Most were still in pyjamas or underwear,” he wrote. “After half an hour, the manager told us it was a false alarm but that no one could work out how to turn it off, so we’d have to wait outside for a technician to come.
“After a further hour, some guests sat on the beach with towels. Others sheltered in reception, though the alarm was so piercingly loud that one teenager began to be sick.”
After two and a half hours, TA retrieved his bags and got a dawn train home. He had had less than four hours in his bed. His request for a refund for the ruined night elicited a £60 “token of apology”.
After his further complaints, Travelodge stumped up the additional £11.99 he had paid for the breakfast he never had, and declared its magnanimity “a fair resolution”.
TA escalated his complaint and was eventually awarded another £49, which still left him out of pocket for those four hours of accommodation.
He was eventually refunded and given that predicable voucher against a future stay when I intervened.
“At Travelodge, the safety and wellbeing of our customers is always our number one priority,” Travelodge says, refusing to say whether other affected guests would be repaid.
