The Biden administration’s Department of Transportation has spent a lot of time jawboning airlines into committing to put passengers up in hotels when faced with overnight delays that are the airline’s fault, such as mechanical issues or lack of crew. There’s now a dashboard on the DOT website showing which airlines have committed to basics like this.
However there’s no minimum standard for what ‘counts’ as a hotel that the airline must provide, as this Delta Air Lines passenger shows after their flight was cancelled and they were put up in a Motel 6 with dirty bath towels and a peeling ceiling.
That moment when @Delta cancels your flight and 4 hours later they book you into a motel 6 and this is the clean towel 😓😓😓 pic.twitter.com/DjKGHuHjCr
— Friendly Neighborhood Pole (@fratinfl) June 16, 2023
This passenger reports it took four hours to get into a room after their flight was cancelled. Customers often have to wait in a very long time to get a room, eating into the time they’re able to sleep. Even airlines that will provide you a room automatically through their app may not have any rooms available (at their discount rate) to provide you.
Poor quality accommodations that it takes time to even provide you isn’t just a U.S. airline issue. Air Canada has sent a man and a woman, who didn’t know each other, to a hotel to share a room. And in China, Hainan Airlines put passengers up in an S&M-themed hotel.
So what do you do instead?
- Rely on your credit card coverage. Pay for your ticket with a credit card that offers trip delay coverage, book your own room and save receipts for it, along with ground transportation and meals. If the airline is offering you a room that could obviate coverage. But you’re assured the property you are comfortable staying in. You won’t wait. And you can look farther afield if need be. Sure, airport hotels might well all be booked. But if you aren’t spending an hour in line to get the room is a 20 minute drive away from the airport (also billed to trip delay coverage) so bad?
- Request a distressed passenger rate. If you don’t have credit card trip delay coverage, and you can’t find a good rate on your own that you’re willing to pay, one alternative to the long line may be the baggage office. Ask there about distressed passenger rates for hotels. If the line is long at your airline’s baggage office, or it isn’t staffed, be friendly and ask at another airline’s baggage office.
- Use points. Airline hotels often are great deals on points, with reward costs based on a hotel’s average daily rate which tends to be brought down by large airline contracts for housing crew. A few thousand points from your stash can get you a far better night’s sleep, more quickly, than relying on the airline.
Airlines may give you a free room when you’re faced with a controllable overnight delay. But you get what you pay for – you probably don’t want to sleep in the room they’re going to give you. There are exceptions, but it can be very much worth venturing off on your own rather than rolling the dice on free.
As you have covered recently, the quality of hotels has been going down. I used to stay at Motel 6 all of the time when they were newer properties and they were advertising all of the time. They were clean rooms at a decent rate. I didn’t care about a pool, lounge, restruant, or breakfast. I just needed a clean room for a good night’s sleep and a shower. My last experiences were less than good.
My last stay was only because I couldn’t find a place on short notice that I was willing to pay more money for, so I settled for a Motel 6 that had been recently remodeled. Well, that was an experience. The craftsmanship was, well it basically looked like they hired a handyman to do the work who was new and inexperienced. It felt more like a prison cell than a motel room since all of the walls were concrete block, the floor was cheap linoleum, and the AC was not removing the humidity so I may might as well have been sleeping in a cold sauna.
The stay before that, after I got to my room, they gave my room to two more people because the lady showed my room as available yet. I was in bed when two separate times people were able to enter my room. Thankfully I had the door chained.
But now I read about all of the fees that hotels are adding on. I never liked Marriot because they charge a lot for the room and you don’t really get much, then they nickel and dime you for everything. I can stay at a Hilton for the same money and get a much better value.
always get your own hotel.
@ Gary — This is a great example of why I usually just skip the “free” hotel. Instead, I just use the situation as an opportunity to earn a qualifying night that I will need anyway, or to use a free night certificate that may expire soon anyway. Motel 6, um, no way in hell.
1. Trip delay coverage is a non starter. The insurer will ask you for a written statement from the airline asserting that a free room was not offered. Also, if you paid for your air ticket primarily in points (and the credit card paid only the $5.60 taxes) then you have another uphill battle.
2. Instead of asking another airline for a distressed pax rate, why not ask your own airline for a better hotel of your choosing? Search for hotel inventory as you are standing in line. Request those hotels by name. Failing that, assert that hotels like Motel 6 are unsuitable for you due to health and safety risks.
3. What really needs to happen is beyond the scope of the Department of Transportation. Why are there accommodations in America that are unlivable? We bill ourselves as the best and most advanced country on the planet. We need to pass laws that mandate a standard of cleanliness in any property.
As an accommodation, if an airline gave you a pop-up tent for lodging, a pop tart for a snack, a cot, and a “remain overnight kit,” would that meet the qualification of deluxe substitute hotel accommodations if you can set up your tent in the vicinity of your next flight departure gate?
I once got stranded overnight in Chicago. The hotel they put us up in was okay…the room was clean, if basic, and we weren’t even in it for that long as our replacement flight was at like 8am.
Except.
It was in a strip mall with, well, a porn shop and a liquor shop, easily 40 minutes from the hotel.
We had meal vouchers. The agent (this was American) failed to warn us of a salient fact.
The hotel had no restaurant. This would not have been a big deal if the agent had told us as we could have grabbed something at the airport.
It was July 4.
So I asked the hotel front desk person for help. She handed me two *pizza menus*. (Pro tip: If stranded in Chicago, some of the local pizza delivery services take airline vouchers). This was, of course, better food than the airport had and probably better than a hotel restaurant.
Except it was July 4.
It took two hours to get pizza. Good pizza when we got it, but the poor pizza joint was overwhelmed.
I think we got three hours of sleep.
So next time we get hotel vouchers, I am specifically going to *call the hotel* from the airport and ask if they have a restaurant. I don’t blame the agent that much, she probably didn’t know, although she *should* have been given that information to pass on.
@Alison – “the insurer will ask you for a written statement from the airline asserting that a free room was not offered.”
I have never ever seen this
Surprisingly, I was offered a decent place to stay in LAX by Spirit of all airlines. They had two hotels and I snagged the Marriott. So it doesn’t always suck…but yes, if it happens and the offered accomodations is crappy, just book your own hotel. I have also chosen to sleep at the airport instead. I put down my backpack, use it as a pillow and off I go zzz.