News and notes from around the interweb:
- Sneaky approach to cancelling bookings by Le Meridien Maldives after honoring a mistake rate. Months after making reservations, and months before a stay, the hotel is emailing guests insisting on arrival and departure flight details within 24 hours to arrange seaplane transfers. If the guest is offline, like flying an American Airlines long haul flight with inop wifi they’re out of luck and their booking will be cancelled.
Did you jump on that cheap Le Méridien Maldives deal back in March? Well, check your email.
It seems the hotel is trying to cancel as many of these bookings as it can by imposing an artificial 24-hour deadline to respond with details (even though our stay is months away) pic.twitter.com/XIwpGfETMs
— JT Genter (@JTGenter) June 5, 2025
- Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo detained for an hour by TSA over sunflower seeds
- Condor A321 Misses Munich Curfew By 10 Seconds, Causing EIGHT-HOUR Detour
- El Paso brothers bought a broken-down 727 four months ago. They’re still not sure what to do with it. (HT: Joe R)
- You’ve got to have sno cones in North Texas. DFW airport is in the process of procuring a shaved ice truck. Seems like they might just contract for one on the occasions they need it though?
- I trust Costco with my data more than the contractors that feds have for their multistate database though.
- Every long haul Amtrak train, ever.
[T]he people seated right behind me struck up a conversation, as they quickly found they had a lot in common — the man had just been released from prison the day before, and the lady was going to Tampa to visit her son, who was locked up.
Separately, at the station, a woman ran into an old colleague, and introduced her stepson to him. “We used to work together at the Bureau of Prisons.”
About 20 minutes before we arrived in Tampa, an older lady with two bags came up, and tried to take a seat in the first row, next to another woman (there’s no assigned seating on this train). The second she did this, the other woman spread her body across both seats and said “what do you think you’re doing, you b*tch, these are my seats?”
You’re being awfully snobby about Amtrak. I have limited experience but nothing like what was described.
As to the Le Meridien, it’s a Marriott brand so expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.
Shame on Marriott here. Le Meridian Maldives is trying to shift blame to consumers. I’ve been to Maldives many times, many properties. Unless it is literally the day before arrival, nothing ‘needs’ to be within 24 hours for TMA, the operator of the seaplanes. This is just a ploy, another ‘gotcha,’ to cover up their own mistakes. Fight it. Thanks as always to Gary for naming and shaming these bad practices.
Marriott could have just cancelled all the reservations due to a mistake fare (as numerous airlines have done) so it seems crazy IMHO to blame them for trying to limit the damage. The notice is reasonable.
Everything isn’t about YOU getting a cheap deal. These are businesses who should look out for their own self interest. Never forget that!
@ AC — Seriously? This notice is in no way reasonable. As 1990 says above, your flights only need to be arranged a day or two before departure. Perhaps you’ve never been to the Maldives?
@AC Thus contact law should be just disregarded? An advertisement is not a contract but an invitation to make a contract, any high school student knows that. Once Marriot accepted the reservation they entered into a contract.
What if it was the other way around. You book the room at $5,00,000 a night and then do not want to stay there and it sits empty. Does Marriott have an enforceable contract to have you pay for the empty room?
Game on.
I’ve taken every long haul Amtrak route in the system. Pretty sure those interactions have more to do with the fact they took place in Florida than that they took place on Amtrak.
Historically, I’ve been a fairly loyal Marriott customer. Between my decades of regular stays at both Marriott and Starwood properties, I’m lifetime Gold in Bonvoy and, until fairly recently, was a butt in bed Platinum.
But in the last 3 years, I’ve shifted almost all my business to Hilton and Accor, with some IHG on the side (depending on where in the world I’ve need to be) and I don’t miss Marriott at all. None of these other groups are perfect, of course, not least of their problems is lacking the “something everywhere” footprint of Marriott, but each one of them consistently does better than Marriott was doing. My last Marriott stay, an award stay at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House London, was miserable. Zero status recognition combined with all of the banal mediocrity that property has anyway. At least the location met our needs.