Have you tried looking for the hotel on another website as they may still have availability. It's very short notice I know but maybe worth a try as your flight will be still booked.

We tried that already. As it is short notice, the price is literally double what we paid!

Hi Margaretilori,

My name is Sophie and I work for Travel Republic. Sorry to hear about your hotel overbooking. If you send me an email to community@travelrepublic.co.uk with your booking reference I can look into this for you. When a hotel overbooks and informs us we do tell our customers straight way, it's a shame that the hotel told us so soon before you go away. If you send me an email I'll see if we can get you an appropriate alternative,

Regards

Sophie

Hello Sophie,

The booking reference has now been sent to you but we have not heard from you (or indeed anyone at Travel Republic) as yet. This is turning out to be a NIGHTMARE!!!!!!! We are trying to find accomodation online but this is proving impossible. This should NOT be happening. We already had confirmed booking with Travel Republic. The hotel and flights were all confirmed. We have already paid in full. We should not be subjected to this last minute mad scramble for accomodation!

Hi Margaretilori,

I have been corresponding with your husband via email over this and have passed on all your messages to customer services.

I can completely understand your frustration at such a close time to your holiday. The hotel itself over booked and then informed us that there were no vacancies, hotels often do this to guarantee bookings. I have passed on that you would accept the Titanic Park to our team and they will be trying to resolve this for you. Please do email me if you have any questions.

Regards

Sophie

I reckon we should start a section on HT specifically to “name and shame” all the hotels which practice overbooking. It can really cause folk horrible problems and ruin vacations.
If all hotels realised that this info was becoming very public about them, and that their future bookings would consequently be seriously damaged, they might think twice before engaging in this disreputable practice.

The problem is that hotels accept booking from the travel agents / accom bucket shops / tour ops etc but still choose to sell rooms privately on the possibility there will be a cancellation somewhere along the line from one of the agents.

Rooms purchased privately from the hotel are generally more expensive than going via an agent/tour op site where they have already pre-agreed prices for the coming season or year. Therefore, the hotelier gets more dosh in his pocket for selling rooms at a higher price than he receives from the agent/tour op etc....

Of course, every so often there are no cancellations and that's when the hotel has to come clean with the agent who made the reservation and they are the one's who have to take the flak and bad publicity.

Most of the bigger companies do charge back any compensation (if they have to pay out to the customer or if they have to pay extra to accommodate the guests elsewhere) to the hotel. Certainly the company I used to do this - that was my team's job!

But of course, the rate agreed by the agent/tour op will be a lesser amount than that the hotel charges for his private bookings so he will be happy to continue as long as he keeps getting away with it.

If a hotel continually does this then eventually, the agent/tour op will drop the hotel from their brochures.

Most agents/tour ops have an agreement that if they have rooms unsold in their allocation at a hotel inside a number of weeks prior to arrival dates they will hand them back to the hotel in case he can sell them privately. This is all fine and this is where you will usually see such comments as "price on request" or the agent has to ask if they can take a room back into their allocation if someone is trying to make a last minute reservation. They most often won't get the room at their agreed contract rate either so prices aren't usually the same as advertised in the brochures.

It's also one of the most common complaints regarding the above scenario when an agent/tour op tells a prospective customer they have no rooms available but if a customer makes a phone call to the hotel it makes the agent/tour op seem to be liars as the hotel will quite happily say he has rooms to sell....

Cyprus was one of the destinations under my control and I can tell you that one of the main Thomson units in Limassol was heavy on direct selling of rooms to repeat guests and then making their own arrangements with our guests when they arrived and were overbooked. Often they would move them into an annexe for a few days or even offer to send them on one of the Egypt mini-cruises but didn't tell the hotel reps of any of these arrangements.

Only when the customers returned did we find out what they'd done if they didn't make a complaint in resort. Mostly the customers were only letting us know rather than seeking compensation but we started to charge back and hit the hotel pockets instead. Even though the hotel believed they had already recompensed the guest in resort with alternatives we hit them for breach of contract instead.

Once they realised they weren't going to get away with it any longer - it all changed and we had no further issues.

So, ukbill could have hit the nail on the head.... By naming and shaming the Hotel rather than the tour operators or agents may just be the way to bring the publicity to the right doorstep.

Maybe a new part for the forum? Or, add it into the Review part under each hotel as "overbooked on arrival" with a field for the date of arrival and whether the room was booked with agent/tour op (a list of drop down choices would be good).

Totally agree that is usually the hotel that overbooks, and of course they shouldn't do this, but it's exactly what airlines do. Hotels vary rarely bump direct bookers as they make more money out of them.
The problem is that lot's of people who book with online companies like TR don't read the terms and conditions before they book. Lot's think they are booking with a tour operator who book packages, and don't realise the company just acts as an agent and usually books accommodation through one of their own suppliers. It is always the acting agent that gets the flack and bad press.

Hello Margaretilori, I do hope that the reason why you haven't been back to let us know how you got on is because you did get away on holiday on Friday after all to a hotel that you were happy with. On the whole I think TR has acquired a good reputation here on HT for doing a much better job with regards to sorting out members problems than certain other sites.

Perhaps wehn you get home you could update us on whether and how your problem was sorted?

SM

Travel Republic...good reputation...? That, I am sure a lot of people will find downright ludicrous! Needless to say we are not touching TR with a bargepole ever again and they will be hearing from us very soon.

They do actually have a good reputation on here for trying to get customers problems sorted out. As the original problem wasn't of their making, they are limited as to what they can do.
It's up to everyone who they book with, and who they avoid, but there are plenty of people who have had the same problem when booking through Thomas Cook, Thomsons and the bigger agencies. If a hotel overbooks, it is not the agents' or tour operators' fault.

Sunaddict wrote:

It's up to everyone who they book with, and who they avoid, but there are plenty of people who have had the same problem when booking through Thomas Cook, Thomsons and the bigger agencies. If a hotel overbooks, it is not the agents' or tour operators' fault.

..an example of that was the fiasco that happened in the Dom Rep in 2008. The Gran Bahia Principe Punta Cana was seriously overbooked,to the extent that they were paying huge bribes to get people to relocate - many Thomson/First Choice customers were moved that Spring!!

It still amazes me when a customer blames the tour operator when it is quite clearly the fault of the hotel for overbooking. Sometimes I think people just beleive what they want to believe because they are angry and it suits them to see it that way. Hotels have been doing this for years.

Things do go wrong with flights and accomodation that are not the fault of the tour op or agents. In some respects you can't judge how good they are until something goes wrong. In your instance, I wonder if you would have been so irate if the initial call was more helpful. I think a company should never underestimate just how important their front line staff are to their reputation. Once Sophie was aware it seems that she dealt with it right away, working away on an acceptable solution( just a pity your husband didn't let you know about the emailing).
Several years ago, I got a call from Expedia the day before we were due to fly. Emirates had dropped a flight and apparently the only flight Emirates could offer was 2 days earlier(return obviously). This was mid afternoon and I was really upset, obviously. The woman on the other end then told me that she would sort it by the end of her shift(6pm). Have to admit, even though she was very nice on the phone, I did check myself by phoning emirate She actually stayed on her shift and we got it sorted by about 7pm. We got a later Emirates flight, which meant an overnight in Dubai and Emirates picked up the hotel bill. We actually only had 6 hours between flights so I think there was a bit of armbending going on. So, after the stress levels rocketing sky high to begin with, I came away with nothing but praise for the way it was handled- and made sure that her bosses knew as well!

Fiona wrote:

Things do go wrong with flights and accomodation that are not the fault of the tour op or agents. In some respects you can't judge how good they are until something goes wrong. In your instance, I wonder if you would have been so irate if the initial call was more helpful. I think a company should never underestimate just how important their front line staff are to their reputation.

Have to agree - in the case I quoted above, Gran Bahia were SO embarrassed by the overbooking fiasco that they were throwing money at it - I spoke to one American couple who got paid over $1000 ($200 per day) to move temporarily to another(even better)hotel in Punta Cana - by the time we got there, the offer was only for 2 days, unfortunately, but we still took it - 2 days at Cayo Levantado,a whale watching trip and $400!!plus a complimentary upgrade when we got back! Now that is Customer Service!
The interesting thing was that the First Choice rep was advising AGAINST accepting the move! Never did find out why - altho' I suspect it was because they wouldn't be able to flog us THEIR trips!!

Overbooking by hotels is common. And they do use games to worm their way out of it without telling the Tour Operator head offices.
I have a couple of recent examples of reputable quality hotels doing it.
In February 2011 I was at the Heritage in South Goa. They had overbooked and were offering people “free excursions” to Palem (tent on the beach) if they would vacate their rooms for a couple of nights.
In October 2011 I was at the Riu Tikida Dunas in Agadir, Morroco. They had overbooked and were offering people “free excursions” to their sister hotel in Marrakesh, just to get them to vacate the Agadir rooms.
In both the above cases I had travelled with Thomson/First Choice and, since I rejected the “free offers”, I wasn’t personally affected or hurt by this.
But it could easily have been bad, and the hotels should simply NOT do it.

I think the problem comes down to people not understanding that TR are not a travel agent. They are a merely an advanced search engine that pull parts of a holiday together. If the hotel over books and then cancels then you are refunded that amount. It is not TR's fault that you then have to pay more. If you have a problem with that then book with a travel agent and book a package holiday.

The OP will be wasting her time by complaining to TR as this is not their fault. A little more understanding of how the dynamic packages work would have helped this matter.

TR are an online travel agent, not just a search engine, but they aren't a tour operator. To comply with the new regulations, they applied for a Flight Plus Atol in May and have just been granted one by the CAA. In future as long as what you buy fits the flight plus criteria, it will be financially protected by the CAA.

I can never understand people blaming OTA's when hotels are overbooked. If they'd booked a hotel on the high street through Thomsons or Thomas Cook, they wouldn't blame them.

thanks for the info! didn't realise the got granted the flight plus