Outrage at Phish Festival: Hotels cancel bookings at the last minute to make money and resell rooms at a higher price
Phish is performing at a huge festival in Delaware. Hotels are canceling their reservations to resell the rooms for more money.
A year ago, rumors began swirling that Phish would host a festival in Dover, Delaware. People were booking hotel rooms for August 15-18 before 45,000 fans descended on town.
This meant they got regular room rates. These were not mistake prices. They paid the normal hotel rate.
For the hotels, however, it was a missed opportunity and a huge loss. Fans knew what the hotels didn’t know – that demand would be very high on those dates and people would be willing to pay more. The hotels have therefore cancelled ventilators at the last minute.
The Wyndham Garden Dover hotel canceled rooms that had been booked for a year on Sunday morning, just days before the event.
- Some guests received messages that they had cancelled the bookings themselves
- Others were told that their “payment” had not been received, even for rooms not paid for in advance
- Others were simply told that the hotel was overbooked and would not honor their reservation.
Customers who wanted to complain were asked to write, but the hotel ignored the messages. Some who managed to speak to someone were told that the hotel had bookings for Air Force guests that they had to honor (which they had somehow not known about beforehand). In the meantime, hotels were charging three times more than usual. These bookings were apparently honored.
Wyndham headquarters directed guests back to the hotel. Sometimes people mistakenly assume they are customers of the chain.
- Hotel owners are the customers
- The product is the guests.
Hotel owners sometimes refer to members of their loyalty program as “leads,” or potential customers to whom they can offer rooms.
This is not unusual. Hotels cancel guest reservations when they can consistently sell rooms at a higher price, such as during the NFL Draft, a solar eclipse, or a major college graduation.
Sometimes the hotel will simply resell the rooms and be honest about what they did. This has happened to me more than once (a Westin and an Alila). This is how you avoid being turned away when a hotel is overbooked.
