Online hotel reservations are still subject to human error

Little makes a traveler’s heart sink faster than to show up at a hotel clutching a printed reservation confirmation only to be told at the front desk, “Sorry, we don’t have you in our system.”

That’s what happened last November to Chad Graham of Rancho Cucamonga. Using Hotels.com, he had made a reservation for one night at the Valadon Hotel in West Hollywood. When he arrived, he was told that the hotel did not have his reservation. Even worse, no rooms were available.

“The manager of the Valadon said he never received a fax from Hotels.com,” Graham said.

It seems decidedly low-tech for online travel agencies such as Hotels.com to fax reservations to hotels, but it’s still a common method for relaying such information, said Jared Blank, an analyst for the New York-based Online Travel Review, which publishes travel industry updates.

Inaccuracies can be introduced when sending, receiving and inputting reservations information by fax, Blank said. That isn’t a factor when the information is relayed electronically into a hotel’s reservation system.

“It’s purely a human error thing,” he said. Small chain and independent hotels such as the Valadon are more likely to have problems than the big chains because they are less likely to have direct access to their reservations systems, Blank said.

“This doesn’t happen very often and is happening less and less as hotels and online travel agencies like Hotels.com [and] Expedia establish direct connections with hotel reservation systems,” Hotels.com spokeswoman Nicole Hockin said.

“Unfortunately, [incidents] like this can happen even if you book directly with the hotel, as this seems to be an overbooking instance.

“Hotels.com takes full responsibility for every hotel reservation booked through Hotels.com,” she said.

From the Valadon, Graham called Hotels.com to see whether it could put him up at another hotel close by.

“They had a room in the Valley or out near Glendora,” he said. “The problem was that the American Music Awards were going on that night, and everything was booked solid in L.A.”

Hotels.com’s other lodging options weren’t convenient because Graham needed to stay in West Hollywood to be close to parties that he and a friend planned to attend that night. So Hotels.com refunded Graham’s money for the Valadon reservation and offered to pay up to $150 for one night if he could find a hotel on his own. He ended up staying with friends in Santa Monica.

Even though Hotels.com tried to make things right, a sold-out town is a sold-out town, and Graham was soured by the experience. “This happened in November, but I’m still very angry about it,” he said in an e-mail in January.

“Like most young professionals who are in their 20s, I very frequently use sites like Orbitz and Cheap Tickets. I need to know as a consumer that I’m guaranteed a room.”

Unfortunately, buyers need to beware. “The third-party sites have done a much better job integrating directly, but even that doesn’t guarantee you anything,” analyst Blank said. His advice for people making online reservations:

Confirm on the phone. Call the hotel directly a couple of days before you arrive to make certain that it has received the reservation. “You’re taking a big risk to just show up,” Blank said.

Print and retain your receipt. If it doesn’t include a phone number for the hotel -- Graham’s Hotels.com receipt included the hotel’s address but not its phone number -- use an online Yellow Pages directory.

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Contact James Gilden at www.theinternettraveler.com.