I've twice been on the reverse side of this situation where a hotel
gave me a guaranteed reservation and then failed to hold a room
available. Once the room had been reserved with either Visa or
Mastercard and the hotel basically told us that we were on our own
but could use the pay phone in the lobby to search for another place
to stay. Complaining later to the credit card company got us
nowhere. The other time an AMEX card had been used to hold the
reservation and the treatment was quite different. They
apologized for having overbooked, arranged transportation to
another hotel and paid for my first night's stay there plus a few
free phone calls so I could let others know where I was staying.
I heard similar stories from others and apparently AMEX had a
much stricter policy of making both the hotels and customers
adhere to the guaranteed reservation policies.

Amex had nothing to do with it. You just found a hotel that unscrupulously
overbooks, but still has a conscience about doing so.

Unscrupulous hotels that over-book are trying to fight the no-show/bogus
reservation problem by playing the odds, rather than getting guaranteed
reservations and following through with charging no-shows. When everyone
actually shows up, someone gets screwed. You were "it" that night.

We NEVER over-book. Since each suite is unique, represents a different era
of aviation history, and is often specifically requested, it's pretty tough
to substitute one suite for another. Thus, with a guaranteed reservation,
that suite is yours -- no matter when you show up.

But, on the flipside, in exchange for this kind of service we will charge
you if you don't show up -- period.

One exception that ONLY pilots receive: If you are flying in, and
conditions drop to below VFR minimums anywhere along your route of flight,
you may cancel up to 6 PM without penalty. This "IFR Cancellation Policy"
has proven to be VERY popular with our private pilot guests, as you can
imagine! (We instituted it after running into hotel issues ourselves over
the years. Face it, flying a light plane isn't the most reliable form of
transportation, and thus we ended up never making hotel reservations in
advance, for fear of being charged for no-showing. This resulted in some
nasty sleeping experiences, on occasion, when we couldn't find a decent
hotel room.)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"