Update: Hotwire is aware of the situation and refunding monies as appropriate. Also - Kerry from SDCC Unofficial Blog broke this story and she and the people involved like Transmute Jun deserve a lot of credit for preventing an epic hotel room horrorshow.
Two quick hotel updates... one kind of disturbing.
SDCC Unofficial Blog has uncovered a weird story of people who booked rooms at the Omni for SDCC 2015 through Hotwire - or so they thought. Omni had no record of the reservation and these people are now getting conflicting information about whether or not it's legitimate. So if this is you - do what you have to do to make sure you get a room this summer. You may have thought you could skip Hotel Day but that may not be the case. Everyone else: I know we all love the idea of finding that semi-secret backdoor deal, but they almost always turn out to be shady. Whether it's a hotel room or a badge or anything else, confirm arrangements as much as possible - as these people were fortunately smart enough to do.
On a brighter note, they've also confirmed (kind of) that Hotel Day will be on March 24. Yep, another Tuesday. That means of course that sometime over the next 9 weeks we'll have:
- The Early Bird Hotel Sale
- Open Registration
A word on Early Bird - I predicted last year that this would sell out this year for the first time. Why? Because after Hotel Day, when hotel reservations went live again (they always shut down for a bit after Hotel Day), it was the hottest mess ever. Worse than a badge sale. I suspect that experience will spur a number of people to play it safe with Early Bird. We'll see if I'm right.
As for timeframes, I'm guessing Early Bird will go live somewhere from late January to mid-February and Open Registration anytime from early February-early March. Emphasis on "guess."
I'm one of the people involved in this Omni mess. A number of us were speaking with Kerry from SDCCblog and she wrote an article about it (in fact, the hotel confirmation screenshot is mine, which I provided to Kerry). It looks like this Kessler site copied her article entirely without crediting SDCCblog. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, we all knew this was 'risky' when we booked it, because it was 'too good to be true'. That's why we all kept our backup hotel reservations and were pushing Hotwire for an Omni confirmation number. It was us pushing and constantly calling that led Hotwire to investigate and realize their mistake: that the rooms had never been available for them to sell. (Just to clarify, it was actually a subcontractor named Tourico that offered the rooms through the Hotwire site and failed to do their due diligence. I know Hotwire is very upset with them right now.)
To be fair, Hotwire is doing everything they can to make this situation right. They have given full refunds to everyone who has asked, and they are working with everyone individually to try and find them alternate accommodation (a few lucky people have been booked into the Hilton Bayfront, others at the Indigo). So in the end, this was a worthwhile 'risk'. In my case, I got the refund, but I have my money back and I know in plenty of time, so I can participate in Hotel-mageddon. No harm, no foul. My guess is that Hotwire has learned from this experience, and they really seem to be pulling out the customer service on this one.
I just changed my post to reflect that Kerry did the work here. You all deserve serious credit for sniffing this out and getting it made right - this could have been a disaster of epic proportions.
DeleteIs there any chance Hotwire might get you a room elsewhere? It's nice that they're fixing this, and I'm glad you got your money back. But it'd be awesome if you could get a Hilton room locked down.
Just to update, Hotwire has been working overtime to make sure that those of us impacted by this issue are being put into alternate hotels *with which we are satisfied*. In other words, they're not trying to fob us off at the Ramada Gaslamp (as booking.com is attempting to do with everyone who had Hard Rock reservations through them). In my case, Hotwire is putting me up at the Hilton Bayfront. I've been really impressed with their customer service on this.
ReplyDeleteNice. Just goes to show that it's never too early in the year for an SDCC mess, but at least this one is getting fixed in time.
DeleteThat was the whole point. We wanted to know whether or not this was taken care of so that (if necessary) we could start over again and go through Hotel-mageddon.
DeleteBut yeah, SDCC has become a series of year-round crises. ;-)