How bizarre.
I had this same experience at a Doubletree in New Jersey. I was working at a client site, we had system problems, and I didn't get out of there until 3:30 AM. When I showed up they had given my room away. They sent me to a roach motel down the street, where I got the last room available. Crappy room, wallpaper and carpet didn't match, under the bed was dirty, and it was a smoking room (and I don't smoke).
There is no such thing as a guarantee in that business.
LQ
Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.
Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
Agent: I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody
can just take them.
This is actually a very common practice in the hospitality business (I use the term “hospitality” loosely. They call it “walking” a guest. They pay for your alternate hotel room and your cab fare both to and from the other hotel. Unfortunately, guests generally get walked when they’re showing up a 3:30 in the morning because of delayed flights, late meetings, etc. The last time it happened to me, in Chicago, the hotel I had guaranteed reservations at offered to send me to a flophouse in a part of town I wouldn’t’t want to visit without an armored personnel carrier and a squad of marines fully decked out in all their battle rattle. Fortunately, I had a meeting I was hosting in the hotel which was walking me, and I was able to prevail on the desk clerk to let me roll a folding bed into the meeting room (which had a full bath) so I could get about three hours sleep before getting up to prep for my presentation.
Other occasions when I was walked didn’t work out as well, but I must admit that, in about thirty years of spending 200 or more nights a year in hotels, I can only recall getting walked 5 or 6 times. It doesn’t’t happen that often.