Be careful with Alaska Air

Particularly with its Hotel Reservations.

I wasn't. I went down to the Bay Area several weekends ago for my cousin's birthday. I made a reservation in a motel via the Alaska Airline site. They charged my credit card. I thought I was set. Hello!

I arrive at the motel and the clerk looks at me and says "No room at the inn!"

"What about my reservation?"

"Huh? You don't have one."

I immediately called Alaska's reservation service from the lobby of the motel. Was Alaska Air any help? No way. (This is at 10PM Saturday night, mind you, and my immediate issue was simply to find a place to stay.) The supervisor there tells me that it was the motel's fault and then extends himself and tells me that he is prepared to refund my payment.

Duh! Goodbye Alaska Air hotel reservations!

•••

Here's the letter I sent to Alaska Air. I am waiting patiently for an acknowledgment.

•••

UPDATE 1/26/06 -- I ultimately received a bland and meangingless corporate brush-off.

July 11, 2005

William S. Ayer, President
Alaska Air Group
P.O. Box 68900
Seattle, WA 98168

RE: Hotel Itinerary # 1404881264

Dear Mr. Ayer:

I had two interesting experiences this past weekend on my trip to Oakland, California, both involving Alaska Air (with whom I flew) and its hotel reservation system.

I rented a car and a hotel room (or at least I thought I had) through your system.

The Enterprise car was fine except I discovered (at night, on the freeway, on my way to find a room because of the situation described in the next paragraph) that there was no windshield wiper fluid. That was slightly annoying but no big deal, I guess, though maybe somewhat dangerous. I could have immediately gotten off the freeway and filled up with water at a gas station. When I checked the car back in on Sunday I mentioned it to the attendant and she promptly & voluntarily took $5.00 off my bill. That was a nice gesture and one not forgotten.

Unfortunately, the reason I was on the road Saturday night was because your reservation system messed up and there was no room reservation for me. When I went to the Best Western University Inn, where I had paid for a reservation through Alaska, in fact there was no room available. Mind you, the reservation had been billed to my credit card account and this was at 10 PM Saturday night. Other nearby motels were also full. The clerk at the hotel was very gracious. But your reservation supervisor was rude and blamed it on the motel. More importantly, Alaska did nothing to help solve the problem. Your man simply blamed the hotel and said (as if I would have paid anyway!) that he was “prepared to refund my payment.” I had to laugh grimly at that empty gesture.

Instead, it was the clerk at the hotel -- who wasn't really even involved at all  since her hotel had never even received the room request -- who got on the phone and called around, finally finding me a dump of a Days Inn (better than nothing) some 12 miles away.

Just a head’s up to you. your staff is not trained to deal with problems. Mistakes happen; we are all human. The test is what do people do when there is a problem? Your people simply said “tough luck.” Staff should have been instantly looking for a replacement room for me and even paying more if it came to that. It was a problem of your creation. You should have tried to help solve it. You didn't.

Sincerely,

Two points in summary:
1. Yes I dumb not to call the hotel directly to confirm and even dumber -- while driving around in a festive atmosphere with family the afternoon I arrived -- not to stop by the motel and check-in. To leave it to 10PM was indeed stupid and to rely on the efficiency of the Alaska network. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
2. But the big point (which I am making to Alaska Air) is that rather than trying to solve the problem, its representative simply tried to shif the blame to the motel.

Comments

[Adam Parish]

I had the same experience with Travelocity in Del Ray Beach, FL on a weekend. My suggest is alwasy book directly with the hotel. The hotel reservation number provide by any of the on-line travel agencies is basically worthless.

[Kent]

I never ever book through any 3rd party site. I got burned once in a similar fashion on a travelocity reservation for a thrifty car rental in newark. That way your confirmation is directly from the company involved and not a 3rd party confirmation code.

I use travelocity, orbitz and the others to comparison search the best price and then I go directly to the airline, car, or hotel web site to make the reservation.

It probably wasn't Alaska Airlines fault but it does sound like the reservations agent was surly. They are probably just providing a web portal to one of the big hotel reservations sites and the computers behind the scenes probably aren't any different than say a travelocity reservation. They're all just web interfaces into the same big third party systems that travel agents use.

[Lynn Schibeci]

We've had no problems using several travel websites *as long as* we call the hotel and confirm that the booking went through exactly as we wanted. The one time that we didn't do that recently was for a trip to Portland, OR - the hotel people thought we were arriving the next day. It was surprise all round, to say the least. That was a Southwest booking.

In any case, the Hotel Lucia management was good to us: they held our luggage for a few hours while we meandered around town and they prepped a room that was just vacated.

I swear, we'll never make that mistake again!

[Chris Scanlon]

I totally agree with what you're saying. I wish more people felt this way and took the time to express themselves. Keep up the great work.

Chris Scanlon
http://www.alaskaaircheap.com