Back on the 15th June this year, I made a reservation, via the Accor Hotels website, for the Mercure Hotel in Tokyo. The booking was non-refundable and for October this year.
There were a couple of reasons for making this early booking:
- My first choice, Hilton (where I have Diamond status), was too expensive.
- Accor had a sale and a deal that included breakfast.
- I was pretty sure that the UK would vote to leave the EU (Brexit) and that the British Pound would fall against other currencies.
Brexit happened and the Pound fell – I was happy that I’d locked in the price of my hotel. Well I was happy until my card was debited on the 23rd July (over a month later) at that day’s exchange rate. That left me almost £50 worse off – in fact I miscalculated and thought I was over £100 worse off.
Had I booked a cancellable reservation, I wouldn’t expected the amount to be charged until I arrived/departed. With this reservation, I might have accepted a charge made on departure but not at possibly the worst time – advance payment but at a bad exchange rate. I booked a non-refundable stay at the Sydney Hilton on the 23rd May – they haven’t charged me yet and although I would have preferred to lock in the rate, if they don’t charge me until I depart in November then I’ll probably be okay with that.
19th September update: Hilton just charged my card and I’m £68 worse off because of the change in exchange rates. I’ve written to them and let’s see what they do.
18th October update: The Sydney Hilton wrote:
I sincerely apologise that your initial email was not responded to and hope that we are able to offer a solution. As this reservation is a fully-pre-paid reservation, unfortunately we are unable to refund this amount to you. However we do understand your frustration and so as a gesture of good will to a valued Diamond HHonors member, we will allow this amount (in the dollar value) to be used towards incidentals during your stay.
And I think that’s a reasonable gesture.
I wrote to Club Accor (where sadly I have basic status). Club Accor used to give Platinum status away like sweets until about a year ago when they decided to stop status matching.
Club Accor said they’d pass on my complaint to the hotel. I waited a few weeks and chased. After another week I received an email from the hotel where they looked at the exchange rate:
Theoretical difference based on this analysis is 622.99-576.77= 46.23 British Pounds.
We shall proceed to the reimbursement of 46.23 British Pounds that will be converted into Japanese yen according to the most favorable for you rate, that of June 15th , as soon as you accuse the reception of this explanatory e-mail.
We wish to reiterate our sincere apology for the delay in charging your card for a prepaid reservation.
I’d already decided that they weren’t going to refund me anything. I was planning to ask for a full refund based on the that fact. So I’d re-checked the rates for the Hilton and found they had become less expensive. I booked the Hilton (on a cancellable rate). Plus I also altered my flights to arrive one day later.
But actually the hotel were pretty nice about it all. I decided to ask for a full refund anyway. Their next reply wasn’t so friendly:
I regret to point out, but your reservation tariff is a prepaid one and thus it cannot be a subject to any change or cancelation according to the sales conditions.
However, taken into account the situation, I can offer you to move your booking for another period and leave the choice of dates up to you.
Please be kindly informed that should the room price be lower than your original booking, the difference will not be reimbursed and should the room rate for the dates you will choose be higher, we shall charge you the difference after comparison with the room rate for your initial stay. Please kindly advise me of your decision.
Finally, may I also inform you that there is no legal obligation for the hotel to process the prepaid booking on the very booking date. We shall not take any responsibility for exchange rate fluctuation with regard to your future bookings. Thank you very much for your kind understanding and cooperation.
So I decided to accept the offer of a change of booking date. I asked for my reservation to be moved forward for one day. That fitted my new arrival date and although I am flying to Sydney on my departure date, that isn’t until 22:00 and so having a room right up until we needed to go to the airport would be handy.
They replied:
Thank you for your kind response. Your request for booking change has been well noted and is now processed.
We will soon send you a new reservation confirmation e-mail.
The refund of 46.23 pounds (6951 JPY) has been ordered and will be processed shortly.
I thank you for your kind understanding and cooperation.
We all look forward to welcoming you at Mercure Tokyo Ginza in October.
So back to being nice and everything looked good.
Unfortunately today I received an ‘updated’ booking – when I checked the dates were exactly the same and there was no mention of breakfast.
The hotel have since sent an updated confirmation and my dates have been updated and breakfast is still included. So I cancelled my Hilton reservation and I’m looking forward to staying (and reviewing) the Mercure Tokyo.
But what do you think? Should a hotel debit your card immediately for a pre-paid reservation at the prevailing rate? Would you prefer that they debited your card at the end of your stay and take a chance on exchange rates?
Hotels can charge you whenever they like even on prepaid rates.
If you wanted to be charged at the time of booking, then when you noticed no charges on your card statement after a week, you should have called or emailed the hotels. In particular, the Hilton Sydney has a general policy of charging prepaid reservations the day before you arrive, but they will charge you straight away if you ask them to.
The hotels would have received the same amount of money regardless of when they charged you. If a hotel was willing to refund you £60 (the cost of one night in many lower-end hotels) then that is an absolute loss to them, which means they are possibly prepared to discount rooms by that much if you approach the manager directly…
If you were so sure of the referendum result, you should have bet £10000 on LEAVE and then losing £100 or so wouldn’t have mattered.
I was sure it would have gone the other way, which would have meant a huge rise in GBP, but wanted to secure some rooms for the second half of 2016. I had already exchanged lots of cash as a hedge against the GBP dropping with the announcement of the referendum and the possibility of the leave win. Anyway, in May the GBP was already very low compared to 2015. So I booked flexible rates, which were 10% more than prepaid rates, but I had already gained the 10% from exchanging cash earlier; and if REMAIN won and the £ went back up, I could just rebook a prepaid rate and they would all cost roughly the same. In the end I just had to stick with the flexible rates I had booked and paid everything in cash, which by the time was worth 25% more in £, but worth exactly the same to all the hotels and shops.
I know someone else who “lost” over £500 because he didn’t bother checking whether the hotel had charged him on a prepaid rate. Something to think about whenever you see “Hilton APAC SALE!!!!” etc. announcements. The GBP is going to drop further once A50 is invoked, and a lot more when we actually leave the EU, so if you’re happy with today’s exchange rate, make sure the hotel charges you or do what I did above.