Help! Hotel shut down as I was leaving for my holiday. What to do?

supergarf50

Hi can anyone please help?

Expedia emailed me saying my hotel in Lille which was booked for the 22nd of October had been cancelled because the hotel had financial difficulties. Expedia gave me a choice of inferior less suitable hotel options. They sent me news of all this an HOUR before I was leaving for the trip. After choosing new accommodation to somewhere I would have to pay larger taxi fares Expedia told me over the phone they would sort all the details out and my initial hotel booking would just be transferred to the new accommodation and they would email the new hotel and myself with all the details.
I departed on my trip and after arriving at 5am I had no details of my hotel that I was promised. Me and my group didn't know what to do so we looked around the city centre for another hotel but all we found were booked due to a football match being played on the Thursday. We decided to try the new hotel we had arranged hours before to see if our names were on the check in list. After paying a big taxi fare we tried to check in to the very budget hotel and they had no record of our names. We then tried to ring and got passed from US to Prague telephone centres to which no one helped. We were promised we would be called back to get a resolution but no call came. We decided to book the rooms ourselves in the budget hotel and had to pay again for a new set of rooms. An hour after checking in we finally received a response via email saying there was a problem with the booking Expedia tried to make the day before which we had by this time already dealt with. We told the woman working on behalf of Expedia our troubles and she told us she would pay for the rooms and that our credit card wouldn't be charged.
Furthermore the hotel we originally booked is taking bookings today, so much for 'financial difficulties.' The credit card we used has also been charged and we still have not received a refund.

Surely we deserve some sort of refund or compensation? How would be best going about this?

Many thanks for your time and help.

SW17

Not completely clear what happened from your post. Could you confirm my understanding, which is:

- Expedia told you hotel A (your original booking) was closed/not available (did they actually say it was closed?)
- Expedia eventually advised you that they had confirmed alternative hotel B (the "budget hotel" you mention above).
- You went to hotel B via taxi and found no reservation
- you booked yourself into hotel B directly.
- Expedia then told you they would take over the booking at hotel B.
- you stayed at hotel B
- you have been charged for your direct booking at hotel B, and you have not received any refund for the money paid to Expedia.

Is this correct?

Have you contacted Expedia customer services since your return, and if so, what did they say. They may not be aware you have been charged directly as well, unless you told them.

How many nights was the stay?

If you can clarify on the above, will try to give you an opinion on what to do next.

You picked quite a time to stay in Lille, hope you avoided the tear gas the next day...

supergarf50

All that information is correct. Expedia notified me a couple of hours before departing that the hotel booking was cancelled due to 'financial difficulties' that the hotel was experiencing.

I have tried to contact Expedia over the phone multiple times the last few days but keep on being put on hold from various call centres around the world. I contacted them in Twitter and they did get back to me and took my case number and said they will be in touch within 72 hours.

2 night stay for the hotel.

We were in Lille for the football and we got attacked by 40 'Lille' fans and my dad had to receive stitches across his head plus we got tear gassed on 2 separate occasions!

SW17

Ok, I'm not a lawyer so not going to talk about your legal rights. However, in practice with such cases, this is what is known as a "book out" in the hotel world. Usually happens when a hotel is overbooked or closes (bit unusual for a hotel to close for financial reasons then reopen quickly, but I suppose nothing is impossible). It would not surprise me if it was a simple overbooking problem.

Industry practice is to try and provide a similar category and location of hotel, due to the football this would have proved very difficult (as you discovered yourself), so they would have to change location and/or category. Sounds like in this case you got a downgrade for both, though obviously I don't know the actual hotels A and B. In that event, you could expect some compensation, perhaps 1 night refund, maybe more if the alternative hotel was a significant downgrade.

This is slightly complicated by the fact that you (quite understandably) made a direct booking at hotel B. If that was at a higher rate than Expedia were paying them, they might try to keep your direct booking and refund Expedia, who would then have to refund you. That would be an argument between Expedia and the hotel, but may drag things out, depending how efficient Expedia's internal processes are (we also don't know if the alternative hotel was arranged by the original hotel, or by Expedia, both are possible and you wouldn't know).

See what they come back with, hope you've told them about the direct booking. From what you've said, you should be able to get something back. If the location was far from the first hotel, and you got taxi receipts, you should ask for them to cover your extra transport costs compared to what it would have cost to/from the original hotel.

Post how you get on, good luck, and hope your dad is ok.

supergarf50

Excellent advice. Many thanks. I had already told them about my direct booking and they said they will cover the charges but still waiting for a reply.

Many thanks again and I will post any results.