This review is directed at the owner-operator and director of operations for the Fairmont Olympic. This isn't directed at management or the staff; who were at least trying to make things right in a stressful situation. I have held senior management roles in the hospitality industry and know quite well that the "overbooking software glitch" is often times just a tacky profit maximization tactic. I've never even had this happen to me at a Best Western, let alone a 'high-end' hotel. A Director of Operations at a luxury hotel would have 'overflow/emergency' rooms available in circumstances like these. Instead, you played the numbers game overbooking your rooms to hedge cancellations and you got burned. Unfortunately for you, the dozens of people you turned away in the lobby included a customer recommended to you by the Alvord family, who I'm sure you are familiar with. In fact, while you were turning dozens of paying guests away, there was an older wealthy couple who walked right up to the front desk and received a hug from one of your staff members and given the "right this way!" treatment to their suite. We get it, you cater to your wealthiest clientele and treat the rest as discardable. As many hotel operators have found out the hard way, this is not a sustainable business practice. If you play with your reputation solely relying on your preferred members it will eventually grind your business down into the red.
When my wife, kids and I arrived at the hotel we were told after 20 minutes waiting in line at the front desk that we had 'canceled our own reservation'. This didn't make any sense; we had booked the hotel room directly through The Fairmont Olympic website. We didn't cancel the reservation, nor did we receive any form of communication stating our reservation had been canceled. No emails, no texts, no missed calls from the Fairmont. The receptionist asked us to wait in order for a manager to come speak with us. During the 45 minutes waiting in the lobby, we started to realize most people in the lobby were being told that there was an "overbooking glitch in the system" and that they were giving out vouchers to stay at the Edgewater Hotel instead. The receptionist noticed that we hadn't been spoken to and assured us we would speak to a manager shortly. 15 minutes later (an hour of waiting at this point with two small children in the lobby) a manager named Dane came over and spoke to us. They had a "glitch in the system" and we were offered a voucher for a free stay at The Edgewater. I appreciate that management had at least made that effort. We were tired, our kids were tired and we just wanted to go to our room that we had paid $560/night for. We weren't looking forward to grab all of our luggage and reload it into our SUV to then drive to another location to start the whole check-in process over again. With no real alternative solution, we accepted the room at the Edgewater. The most frustrating part about this whole experience was that the hotel receptionist for some reason tried to play it off initially as "Oh hmm you seemed to have canceled your own reservation" knowing full well there was already a lobby full of frustrated guests experiencing the same circumstances. This entire situation could have been negated by one simple phone call saying "I am very sorry we do not have your room available due to an overbooking error. We wanted to let you know as soon as possible before you make the trip to our hotel. If there is anything we can do, please let us know". That would have saved you from even having to comp your guest's alternative hotel accommodations. I would have said "Oh bummer, well thanks for at least letting us know." and figured something else out.
