Beware Customer Unfriendly Booking Policies Through Expedia at Ikonik Plaza Mercado…read more
For our bookings for Spain, I made all our family reservations flexible and refundable and was willing to pay higher day rates to do so.
Because our Spain road trip required flexibility, this was the best and only option. When I accidentally mistakenly clicked the non-refundable fare on Expedia, for the Hotel Ikonik Plaza Mercado, for a single nights booking, I called Expedia within five minutes of realizing my error.
Expedia called the management of the Hotel Ikonik Plaza Mercado who had the option, according to Expedia, but were unwilling to release the booking and address the error, despite my call being within minutes of my mistaken booking.
The fact that the management of the Ikonik Plaza Mercado declined to help a future guest who had made a honest mistake, instead opting to pocket a rather small one night room fee, tells me all I need to know about the Ikonik Plaza Mercado. This is not the way to treat customers and its one of the worst practices in the travel industry, in my opinion.
One of the dirty little secrets of the travel industry is that hotels regularly benefit from customer changes of plans, and from customers making mistakes online when selecting between refundable and non refundable fares. For this reason, United Airlines has a 24 window from booking a flight, because their customer may select the wrong flight online, or date, or plans can change, and they value customer loyalty and want to at least address that in some nominal way. After all a customer might check the wrong box online, and this can be simply due to customers honest error. Sometimes a customer error is due to a poor user experience on the website, which doesn't help customers distinguish clearly between fare choices, and between refundable and non-refundable selections. Mistakes happen, as customers are moving quickly through selections & choices online.
Hotel customer are guests. Its unconscionable to make a business decision that to pocket $200 on a one night booking is worth treating a customer devoid of understanding and common decency. It was within hotel management's purview to release the booking, and address the mistake, but they chose not to. Our take aways is that the management at the hotel cares little for their customer or their customer experience. Perhaps the corporate office doesn't care about poor online reviews, but since these management decisions don't happen in a vacuum, customer frustration is likely to result in being called out to a wider audience.
Apparently, the Ikonik Plaza Mercado and their management isn't able to rely on customer loyalty or the quality of their lodgings for return bookings and guest reviews, instead they are willing to pocket money based on a guest's error. In doing so, the management at the Ikonik Plaza Mercado is willing to engage in the worst the travel industry has to offer. Poor management, a low customer service experience bar and bottom drawer practices are in effect at the Ikonik Plaza Mercado.
