Source: BroBible
Summary
A TikTok user, Brittany Schneider, claimed she was denied a room at a Hilton in Washington, D.C., despite having a reservation. The hotel initially said her room wasn’t ready, then later said it didn’t exist. Schneider and her husband were relocated to another hotel, which they found unsatisfactory. Hilton offered compensation, but Schneider said it was insufficient. A later article explained hotel overbooking policies and how Hilton typically handles such cases. Comments from viewers criticized Hilton’s response.
Our Reading
The routine arrives with confidence.
Hotels promise a room, then walk you.
Compensation is a voucher, not a room.
Guests become a problem to solve.
Walking a guest is just another service fee.
Author: Evan Null
She Gets Some Bad News
Schneider says she was told that the hotel would call her when her room was ready. But by the time they finished their dinner at 10:15 PM, they still had not received any messages. Confused, her husband phoned the hotel—and was told some bad news.
“They’re like, ‘I’m so sorry. We don’t even have a room for you guys. We have to take you somewhere else,’” Schneider recalls.
According to Schneider, the hotel offered to put them up in another hotel for a single night, then bring them back to their original hotel booking—something she felt was a bit ridiculous.
“I’m not gonna move to a different hotel, stay there for tonight, and then have to move back to the Hilton tomorrow,” she says. “Like, that’s absolutely insane. We’re staying somewhere else for all three nights, and it better be an upgrade.”
Schneider and her husband decided to return to the hotel to sort out the matter. The hotel offered them enough Hilton points to get a night at another Hilton property, then put them up in a different hotel in another area. Feeling the compensation was inadequate, but eager to sleep, Schneider and her husband took the offer.
The New Hotel Is A Disaster
When Schneider and her husband got to the new hotel, something was immediately amiss. In her telling, the room they were to sleep in was “disgusting.”
“As soon as we walked in, it just smelled overwhelmingly of mothballs, mold, old people,” she summarizes. “I don’t even freaking know what I was smelling, but it was like this extreme odor. You could tell they were trying to cover up some other smells.”
Those weren’t the only problems with the hotel. According to Schneider, the blinds in the bathroom were broken in a way that left one exposed if they tried to shower.
Given all of this, Schneider and her husband decided to book another hotel room—a Hilton that had reasonable prices. But when the couple arrived at 1:30am, they were told that the website should not have let them book and that the hotel did not actually have any available rooms.
With nowhere to sleep, Schneider’s husband began calling various hotels, not only downtown, but in the surrounding area. Eventually, the couple was able to find a room outside of Washington, D.C. for the night. At every step of this process, the couple is using Uber to travel. According to Schneider, they’re paying for these rides with their own money.
Will Hilton Make It Right?
In her later videos on the subject, Schneider says she kept getting conflicting information from Hilton about what she would get to make amends for the company’s error. First it was 50,000 points, then 5,000 points, then dinner vouchers—with no one at the company seemingly communicating about what happened or what Schneider had actually experienced.
“I’m like, ‘Here’s what happened yesterday.’ And then they never respond to that,” she says. “It’s just like someone else will email me something random.”
She says there were attempts to right the issue. For example, the couple was sent a goodie bag with snacks and wine during their stay. Still, Schneider says it’s not enough. To make matters worse, she later tried to use the points for an overnight stay. The points they provided weren’t even enough to cover a single night.
“It cost 70,000 Hilton Honors points to book a one-night stay, and they gave us 55,000,” she states.
“Aside from the fact that we were out of pocket for the stay at the Holiday Inn…the three Ubers we had to pay for out of pocket, and then also the horrible experience our first day in DC and having to find our own hotel at 2 in the morning…for them to give us 55,000 points and a $50 restaurant credit, which was equivalent to two slices of cheesecake and a tip—I just still don’t feel like they made it right,” Schneider concludes.
Do Hotels ‘Walk’ Customers?
You might think that if you have a hotel reservation, a hotel is required to have a room for you at the hotel you booked.
This actually isn’t the case. Either by error or due to a misjudgment of how many people were likely to cancel their rooms, hotels can become overbooked. If this happens, a hotel may choose to “walk” a customer. This effectively means turning them away.
However, that doesn’t mean that hotels are free to just leave their would-be guests on the street. Instead, major hotel chains have “walk” policies that dictate what they should do in the event that a location must walk a customer.
While Hilton does not appear to publicize its walk policy, some pages on its website appear to give an indication about what it includes for guests. One section regarding Hilton Honors members states that, in the event one is walked, “The guest should be relocated to another local hotel within a reasonable distance with all the usual Hilton Honors walk benefits based on the guest’s tier status.”
For group reservations, the site states that those who cannot be accommodated in the hotel they booked should receive “Accommodations at a comparable hotel as close as possible and at no charge to the guest for each night the guest is displaced from the Hotel.”
Viewers Are Angry On Their Behalf
In the comments section, users expressed frustration with Hilton’s apparent solution to Schneider’s issue.
“They gave you a measly amount of points when they should give you a free HOTEL STAY!” a user exclaimed.
“That is crazy. I have never heard of a hotel, especially in a major city, having that problem,” another offered.
“If the Hilton you’re staying at doesn’t handle it contact corporate,” suggested a third. “My mom worked for Hilton for years people get comped for less all the time.”
