Rowdy Guests at Hotel at 2:30 AM - Is There Any Recourse?

[Ericandblueboy]

I took the kids to the National Aquarium and we spent the night at the Marriott Waterfront in Harbor East.  At 2:30 a.m., I can hear a bunch of people congregating in the hallway.  I stick my head out and ask them to be quiet but that didn't get anywhere.  They were wearing tuxes/dresses, so I'm guessing it was a wedding (it was Saturday night).  So I called the front desk, and they sent security, but it took a long time to disburse the drunks.  In any case, the damage was done, I was awake and so was my youngest.  I bitched to the front desk in the morning, but since I paid Priceline for the room, they told me I had to take it up with them.  When I got home, I called Priceline, and they told me I can't get a refund unless I got approval from Marriott.  So I got the run-around.  At this point, I don't feel like wasting any more time.  Has anyone gotten a better response from a hotel with regards to other rowdy guests?

[Bart]

 I bitched to the front desk in the morning, but since I paid Priceline for the room, they told me I had to take it up with them.  When I got home, I called Priceline, and they told me I can't get a refund unless I got approval from Marriott.  So I got the run-around.  

This is absurd.  It's like them saying, "You paid with a Mastercard, take it up with them".

[Ericandblueboy]

I wouldn't blame one or two rowdy guests on the hotel but I think the hotel hosted the reception in this case, and when it ended, everyone came back to the presidential suite a few doors down the hall from my room to continue the partying.  

[DonRocks]

I've gotten a similar runaround booking through hotels.com, and once I even *double-paid* on the same night because I was charged once by hotels.com (who told me to deal with the hotel), and a second time by the hotel (who told me they couldn't refund the room, because I stayed there). It got to the point where it was no longer worth my time, and I gave up and ate the cost. I have reached my "free night" threshhold on hotels.com, and my brand loyalty with them has now dropped to zero - in the past two years, I've booked *50 nights* with them, getting five free nights in the process, but they, too, gave me the runaround, and in doing so, they've lost one hell of a customer.

[DameEdna]

I took the kids to the National Aquarium and we spent the night at the Marriott Waterfront in Harbor East.  At 2:30 a.m., I can hear a bunch of people congregating in the hallway.  I stick my head out and ask them to be quiet but that didn't get anywhere.  They were wearing tuxes/dresses, so I'm guessing it was a wedding (it was Saturday night).  So I called the front desk, and they sent security, but it took a long time to disburse the drunks.  In any case, the damage was done, I was awake and so was my youngest.  I bitched to the front desk in the morning, but since I paid Priceline for the room, they told me I had to take it up with them.  When I got home, I called Priceline, and they told me I can't get a refund unless I got approval from Marriott.  So I got the run-around.  At this point, I don't feel like wasting any more time.  Has anyone gotten a better response from a hotel with regards to other rowdy guests?

I am naturally paranoid, but I think hotels do sometimes save "rooms that are going to have trouble" and sell them on the internet sites. Anticipated parties. Room overlooking construction site. Even room above trash dumpster.

[DonRocks]

I am naturally paranoid, but I think hotels do sometimes save "rooms that are going to have trouble" and sell them on the internet sites. Anticipated parties. Room overlooking construction site. Even room above trash dumpster.

This is a fascinating thought, and it makes so much sense that I can't believe I haven't heard it before. Read the comments I'm getting on this tweet.

If true, this is absolutely (if indirectly) related to johnb's "public got what it asked for" theory on airline travel.

[Joe H]

At the risk of being redundant I travelled 100-125 nights a year for more than 30 years.  Several years more than 200.  Eight or ten years ago I had an experience with a hotel where I had booked the room online.  They (don't remember who) told me that because I had booked with someone else, they were who I had to talk to.

I have never booked another room with anyone else except the hotel itself to this day.  And I never will.

Very simple:  if you stay at Marriott-book with Marriott, with Starwood, with whoever.

For a hotel book directly with the chain or, if an individually owned property, with whoever is responsible for the room AND IS IN THE BUILDING that you can get a decision from when you are there.

i book directly with airlines, with car agencies, with hotels.  With perhaps 4 to 5,000 nights in hotels in America and overseas (real number) I refuse to use a secondary internet agency.  I don't care what they advertise about price.  If you want the absolute best price and are unsatisfied with the price given by the central reservations system CALL THE HOTEL DIRECT.

Telephone call.

Marketing and "guaranteed lowest price" aside you will be surprised at how much flexiiblity the individual hotel can have.  If you book directly with them.  I must note here that I am really insistent about this:  I make the phone call (again, yes, a telephone call) myself even if it is with an individually owned hotel in a small town in Europe.

As for Ericandblueboy's original post there have been a half dozen or more nights over the years where a significant percentage of my room cost was waived because of an interruption.

[johnb]

I'll second what Joe H says.  I don't book hotels very often any more, but on our trip last March we needed a room for several days in Singapore.  Long story short -- I found a fairly good rate at the Fairmont (great hotel by the way) on some booking site but in the event called their booking office to double check.  Turns out they have a policy of matching any on-line rate, apparently if you are in their frequent stay program.  I joined on the spot, gave them the rate I had found, they went to the website and checked it, and gave me the same rate.

Unrelated side story: my only regret from that stay is that that room had the most comfortable bed Mrs. B and I have ever slept in, and we neglected to check out its manufacturer/type while there -- since then we have replaced our mattress, and wish we had known what that one was (I suppose I could have contacted them, but....).  The new one has turned out to be good but not that good.

[sweth]

Thirded re: booking lodging directly w the hotel (for some chains that means directly w the chain); I've never had a hotel not be willing to match an online price, and even sometimes beat the online prices if you have a AAA or other discount that the online sites don't take into account.

Hotels definitely allocate rooms based on desirability vs profitability, but there are a few ways to get around that.

One is to join any reward club for a hotel chain you are staying at (before you check in, so that you can put your reward number on your reservation in advance) even if you will never stay there again; the person who checks you in usually just sees what level of reward member you are but not how often you have stayed, and so as a 0-nights-stayed untiered Marriott Rewards guest you look the same to them as a 9-night untiered guest, and will get better room placement (modulo availability) than someone w/o a Rewards number (though not as good as a Silver/Gold/Platinum member, obviously).

The second trick is actually just to ask *when you check in*. If I see a wedding party or something else when checking in, I've almost never not had success after politely asking the front desk to put in me a quiet room away from the wedding party if possible. If there is no obvious noisome event, I often just ask for a quiet room away from the elevator. (Some rewards programs also let you specify prefs like close to/away from elevator in your online profile, but mentioning it again at checkin doesn't hurt because it reframes the room assignment decision for the clerk as being about finding you a good room rather than just getting you on your way.)

The third, slightly risky, trick is to try to check in a little early or fairly late. If you get there a little before official checkin starts, they often will have turned over all the rooms from the night before and thus will have a full range of rooms open from which to try to accomodate your request for a better room; the downside is that if there are a lot of late checkouts from the night before, or a fully booked house for the coming night, then the clerk might panic and, trying to be helpful and let the early-show guest have a room at all, give you whatever room happens to have been turned over even if it is a mediocre one. (Reframing by asking for a quiet room away from the elevator as above helps mitigate against that--often if there is minimal selection but you are an early-show guest wanting a quiet room, the clerk will tell you that there is a room that doesn't meet your request, or that if you can wait, they can probably get you what you want by normal check-in time.)

Late checkins are also sometimes good for getting a request for a good room fulfilled because by that point, any vacant "nice" room is probably going to stay vacant, so the probable marginal cost to the hotel of giving it to you is zero; at nicer hotels, you also stand a small chance of getting bumped up to a very nice room because they have allocated the last of whatever class of room you paid for to someone else, and when possible in those situations they try to bump you up rather than down. But the downside is that there is also a chance that they will be fully booked and either only have a crappy room left or (rarely in the US except at smaller non-chains) have no rooms left at all (in which case they will refund you but then you still have nowhere to sleep).

Once you are in the room, dealing with noise all depends on the staff. The only trick I can offer there is to be unfailingly polite to the staff when asking for the noise to be dealt with, and if you have to veer off that path, err on the side of tired and miserable and needing their help rather than righteous anger (even if justified). Same thing for if you end up having to talk to noisy guests yourself, and always try to include some reason for why you want them to quiet down--a "hey, sorry to bother you but I have a kid trying to sleep/I have an early flight to catch/whatever" is IME more effective than just a "hey, keep it quiet".