A free night’s stay after hotel failed to follow policy

It turns out you can’t always put a lot of faith in everything you read in automatically generated emails from multinational hotel chains, and the hard part came in getting the hotel to actually abide by its policy.

Herrera, 44, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was born and raised in Madison and was returning to the city with her husband and five children for her parents’ anniversary party.

When they had some problems with the rented full-size SUV they were driving, Herrera knew the family wasn’t going to make it to Madison by their check-in date of June 10, so she called ahead and informed hotel staff they would be a day late and was told that would be fine — Rodeway would take a day off their seven-day stay and only charge them for six.

That wasn’t the story when they got to the hotel, which was still charging them for seven, Herrera told SOS in a June 17 email. “So I asked and he said the manager would take care of it the following day and that I could trust him. The next day, his manager said no way.”

Herrera said she appealed to the hotel’s owner, Choice Hotels, who told her it was up to the local manager whether to make such an accommodation. She took this information back to the manager, but again, the answer was no.

“I feel lied to and from them, I see a lack of understanding and cooperation to work with travelers,” Herrera said. “I would like my $77 and taxes returned to me. And an apology.”

SOS soon found out that you also can’t always put a lot of faith in what you read in a national hotel chain’s automatically generated email response to an email sent to the chain’s dedicated media relations email address.

For while that canned response to SOS’ June 17 inquiry promised, “We regularly monitor this inbox,” it took a message to the company via Facebook on June 24 to jar loose a couple more canned responses and then one that appeared to be written by a human. “Zaira” offered an alternative email address and another promise: “We’ll be waiting for your message.”

In all, SOS made five appeals on behalf of Herrera before a Choice Hotels representative on July 2 offered her a free night in one of the chain’s hotels.

“Thank you for reaching out to our executive team and sharing feedback on the guest experience,” said Joshua Z of Choice Hotels’ Executive Response Team in an email to SOS that day. “I apologize for the delayed response. I want to inform you that we have addressed Andrea’s concerns and resolved the issue.”

Herrera said she, too, got an apology from the hotel chain.