restaurant policy - is this right?

katiepoppycat

I hope someone can advise me on this . . . .

booking a group for a work leaving do at a nice independent hotel. They do a very nice lunch menu - 2 courses for £7.50 or 3 for £10, gastropub type food. They tell me I can't book 23 people for the lunch menu. But the a la carte is £15 for a main which many people can't afford. They tell me they can offer a set menu for £10 per head, email it to me. I tell them it's fine and shall i confirm numbers on the day. They email me back and tell me 'you can if if you want'. On the day I confirm 19. Only 13 turn up. They charge me for 19 meals.

Apparently this is 'standard practice'. Bit of a contretemps with the duty manager who compromised begrudgingly and settled for us paying for 16. Because the company i work for do a lot of business with the hotel someone rang the owner of the hotel who has now issued a refund. It's all dealt with now, but I'm curious. Who was right? They genuinely did not tell me about this policy, otherwise I'd have laid down the law to the folks who'd said they wanted to come.

Opinions appreciated!

Raggie

well you confirmed 19 bookings.. so the restaurant alloacted you 19 covers..

You state it was a set menu, so they would have started to prepare 19 meals, they also may have tuned away other diners because of the extra 6 people you said to expect.

Allowing for the possible food preperation & wastage costs, the loss of profit on the expected covers, combined with who may/or not been turned away.

I think the resaurant was in the right to charge you, but understand their stance on not doing so as you are a regular customer.

IMHO

Mark7799

Can't add much to that - ultimately they are a private enterprise, unless they can sell the additional six places then they had a right to charge. IMHO they should have made it clear that they were accepting the bookings on a non-refundable basis though.

Rex_Mundi

I just showed this thread to my OH. She works for a large multinational hotel (4* and 5* hotels). She books events/conferences/dinners for people.

She said that if you booked dinner for 19, it is standard practice for the hotel to charge for 19 even if less turned up. The only difference to what she does is that she sends out a booking form/contract which you have to return signed, along with the numbers you are booking for. The hotel then takes this as a confirmed contract which is charged no matter how many attend on the day. Her hotel also makes allowances for big customers (the same as happened here).

Nicki

We are last night at one of the swanky London restaurants (there were just two of us). We had to book 2 months in advance and give our credit card details on booking on the basis that if we didn't turn up or cancelled the booking late we would be charged for the meal anyway. This is standard practice for in-demand restaurants in London I think (certainly not the first time we've had to do this) even though they could definitely allocate the place ten times over if you didn't turn up or cancelled at the last minute.

Never had it happen in a pub to be fair, but on the other hand never booked for 19 in a pub either.

advent1122

Nicki wrote:

We had to book 2 months in advance and give our credit card details on booking on the basis that if we didn't turn up or cancelled the booking late we would be charged for the meal anyway. This is standard practice for in-demand restaurants in London I think

I didnt realise Burger King was that popular.

katiepoppycat

thanks for the advice people. I can see now that it isn;t unusual but the hotel made a mistake in not telling me.

regularsaver1

why did the other 6 not turn up?

mishkanorman

We went to a party my OH's boss was throwing as a thankyou for 10 years service to one of the girls. Fancy hotel but not 'top' of the range.

It was booked for 25 and a week before discovered only 20 could go so the boss called to cancel the rest and was told they would charge anyway !

Thats taking the mick a bit


mishka