People get sick or injured and can’t travel, they miss planes or connections, weather strands them and they even forget where they were booked and stay at the wrong hotel. If they do not cancel within the hotels allowed cancel period, they would be charged on the credit card that guaranteed the reservation.

It is often erroneously assumed by travelers that hotels will waive a no-show charge when bad weather prevents people from arriving. While some hotels MAY do this, it is far from the norm. Weather is a part of traveling and hotels do not ‘assume’ some people will be delayed because of weather and absorb that responsibility. Otherwise people can simply make up a story about bad weather when they in fact missed their flight. Therefore, the vast majority of hotels do not allow cancellations for weather related travel problems for the same reason passengers would not allow a hotel to charge a higher rate than they were guaranteed if and when they arrived. A guarantee is a guarantee and people make reservations because they want a locked in room at a specific rate – to be able to cancel at the last hour for any reason would render all reservations worthless. The simple workaround to this would be to just not make any reservations and call hotels for a room when or if you arrive.

But if you do want a guaranteed room, get legitimately stranded through no fault of your own and want a way out of the no-show charge, try one of the following tips I offer.

Get documentation from your airline that your flight was canceled. IF a hotel is amenable to canceling your room, they will almost always require something showing you couldn’t fly anyway. This holds true for sickness or injury or even death too. Get a ‘note from the doctor’ or an emergency room receipt – anything to show why you couldn’t travel. You can also reserve rooms at hotels or motels that have a 6pm hold as most people will know well before 6pm whether they are going to make it or not. If you are going to need the same room for the next night (assuming you can travel the following day), try asking the hotel if they will change the reservation to the following day. One last option is to buy inexpensive travel insurance that will reimburse you for any no show charges.

Contrary to what people may think, hotels do not like charging for no-shows. They staff the hotel and price available remaining rooms according to anticipated occupancy and it is not true they like empty revenue rooms over occupied rooms. Empty rooms do not eat in hotel restaurants or use hotel services like parking, internet, in room bars or pay per view TV. And the fact remains that someone would likely have rented a room if you didn’t have a reservation and the hotel cannot absorb vacant rooms when people do not show up when others would have gladly reserved the room. So it is necessary to charge for no-shows, even if weather related because the main option always exists: do not reserve a room if ANY doubt exists that you may not make it. Most airport hotels charge less to you as a walk in anyway than when you reserve in advance so it actually might save you a few dollars to NOT reserve a room.

By: David C. Reynolds

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