I'm guessing here, but my first thought would be the hoteliers. If there are queries, they're the ones not dealing and sorting out the mess with the guests. All they need to do is deal with the tour operators. Perhaps a reduced room rate for next year as compensation? Greater allocation of rooms for next season?

Tour operators, on the other hand, could be as guilty. They have your money and a lot of people will accept the alternative hotel without kicking up a fuss. Those that complain will be in a minority and can be fobbed off with a little compensation.

We too book our holidays based on a particular hotel and would be totally pee'd off if a specific hotel was overbooked and an alternative given to us.

Mark

As there are supposedly allocations of X number of rooms for hotels in foreign resorts for each tour operator I suspect it may be a bit of both. The tour operator hopes that the hotel can squeeze them in so overbooks.

I know for a fact that UK hotels overbook all the time - one I visited recently for work purposes came right out and told us without us even asking that they routinely overbooked by 10 rooms per night as they have so many no shows. I suspected this went on, but knowing that a no show will still have to pay for one night's accommodation in full they must be making for nothing quite often.

I can't help but think that for tourist resorts used by the main tour operators and even smaller ones, the overbooking is more on the part of the tour operator but I suspect it's a collaboration that is industry wide and accepted, as is the case for UK hotels for mainly business/short break purposes.

I could understand the over booking in the UK hotels more, since generally people are not paying up front before they go.....and so why should these hotels lose out.

However, there's surely no excuse for the package holiday maker abroad situation, since money is paid upfront...so as pointed out in the previous post, there must be a fair bit of getting paid twice for the same thing when people don't show up.

That's right enough. It happened to us years ago, such a disappointment. We were informed 2 weeks before we were due to go and chose one of their alternatives, which although same standard of hotel was not in a resort we wanted and wasn't entirely suitable to our requirements. In hindsight I would have had my dad argue the toss with them and refuse to change, which might have worked but would still have had some other party having their holiday amended instead of us but still.......

I have to agree, with package holidays I do wonder if often the tour operator books up on the basis of flight availability then worries about the hotel later.

I would suspect that the answer is quite simple.

A hotel may have 300 rooms but most TOs will only contract for a small percentage of those. When we look at a holiday brochure we are often in a quandary as to which we shall choose. Many will not achieve the number contracted yet others will.

Considering all the TOs both here in the UK and their continental arms it is a balancing act. I would assume that the hotels will try to accommodate extras from them all knowing that in most cases the TOs will not achieve their total contract.

Where they do or exceed then it becomes a case of how much they (the hotels) are being paid.

For example if Thomson are paying a little more than Thos Cook then Thomson will get the priority and Thos Cook clients will find they are sent elsewhere. Continental TOs I have been told do pay more than their UK cousins so that might be an indicator.

In some cases a little bit of organisation between the various arms will take up any spare capacity. One AOI holiday we took was such a case. It was only used by the UK arms to take up any slack in bookings for the continental arm of the TO.

Hotels are businesses just as much as the TOs. If rooms stand empty they do not make money.

When I was in the motor trade we used to overbook - There are always people who book and do not turn up. Same with hairdressers (my wife is one) although she never overbooks. You still have to pay your staff for being there.

The above is no consolation if you are the one who gets caught up in it, but sometimes even TOs get stuffed.

fwh

just thought i would remark on a comment made, you may pay in advance for your holiday but a hotel only gets paid when the guest has gone homwe, also hotels do have to pay compensation for overbooking normallay average of £50 per person, whether tour operators pass this on is another thing. Tour operators are not perfect and regualay overbook expecting hotels to be able to come up with the extra rooms in high season. then they have a cheek to blame the hotel.