I don’t want to come across as a conspiracy theorist, but I have a theory about the hotels that American Airlines offers its passengers when they misconnect… I’m curious if anyone has a different take.
American’s awful hotel selection after misconnect
There are situations where airlines are on the hook for paying for your hotel, in the event that you have a missed connection that leads to a forced overnight layover. Long story short, this includes situations where a delay is within the carrier’s control, or if you’re flying from a destination where the government mandates that the airline has a duty of care, regardless of the cause.
After a lovely flight in American’s new Boeing 787-9P business class from London (LHR) to Chicago (ORD), I misconnected on my way back to Miami. I’ll talk more about that experience in a separate post (because it was interesting on a few levels), but in this post, I’d like to focus on the hotel aspect of this.
American was on the hook for paying for my hotel because of the misconnect. After I was rebooked on a flight the following morning (departing at 5AM), I eventually got a push notification on the American app, bringing me to a page where I could select my hotel for the night. As a long haul business class passenger, I was given three hotel options. Are you ready for this?!
The first option was the “premium” hotel, which was the Hilton Orrington. The hotel doesn’t have an airport shuttle, and is 13 miles from the airport, and it would’ve been a 45-minute drive to get there (based on mapping out the drive at that time).
Hmmm, okay, well, do you have anything with a shuttle? Yes, there’s the Best Western Schaumburg, which has a 24/7 shuttle. Now, it’s eight miles from the airport (as the crow flies — 14 miles by road), and it would’ve been a 20-minute drive.
Okay, maybe I should do that? How bad could it be? I looked it up on TripAdvisor, and it had a 2.3 star rating, and was ranked #30 of 30 hotels in Schaumburg. Hard pass.
Then there was a third option, which was the Baymont by Wyndham Addison. Great, that has a shuttle from 5AM until 11:30PM, except between 9:30AM and 5PM… lol?
Oh, you thought the Best Western wasn’t great? This property gets a 1.9 star rating on TripAdvisor, and I immediately noticed this picture and this picture.
Suddenly that “premium” Hilton is looking mighty appealing, eh?
This is a deliberate strategy on American’s part, right?
When I misconnect, I’m not expecting that my overnight hotel accommodation is going to be at a Four Seasons or St. Regis.
But I also think it’s not unreasonable to expect that you’re going to be booked at a hotel that’s somewhat close to the airport. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but is something like an Aloft, or Hampton Inn, or Holiday Inn Express, or Hyatt Place, too much to ask for? I’d just like the TripAdvisor review titles to not describe the property as “something out of a bad movie.”
Like, American could never get away with putting its employees up in these hotels, as the types of hotels that are acceptable are clearly defined in union contracts. But the airline is happy to put its premium customers (including business class passengers and elite members) into these hotels?
Of course I acknowledge that airlines presumably have some sort of contracts with specific hotels, so you’re not going to get last room inventory at every hotel. However, I noticed that for the day I was traveling, just about all airport hotels had plenty of availability, and rates were even quite reasonable.
For that matter, one wonders why American would even try to send you to a hotel that’s so many miles away, given that the carrier is also on the hook for ground transportation. An UberX would’ve cost around $50 in each direction, so that’s $100 roundtrip.
Even with a heavily discounted rate, that can’t be cheaper than just booking someone at a hotel closer to the airport.
So that brings me to my thesis, and you guys can let me know if I’m just totally off base. Am I the only one who thinks American is intentionally offering the most unappealing hotels imaginable in order to simply get people to not take the airline up on the offer?
Maybe the airline hopes people will just book their own hotels, claim reimbursement through credit card travel coverage, etc. And hey, in my case it worked out for the airline, because I decided to just book my own hotel.
The thing is, this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened to me when flying American. During my last two forced overnights with the airline, I was also appalled by the hotel options. In this case, I even checked in at the Flagship Lounge to see if they had any better options, and the agent told me that she didn’t even have access to all three of those options that I was seeing through the app.
Bottom line
American really seems to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the hotels that passengers are offered in the event of irregular operations. Like I said, I’m not expecting anything fancy, but you’d think that just an average limited service property near the airport wouldn’t be an unreasonable request.
Instead, I was given the option of a “premium” Hilton 45 minutes from the airport (with no shuttle), the worst rated hotel in Schaumburg, or a hotel that reportedly has wieners drawn on the ceiling.
Has anyone else noticed American’s awful hotel accommodation options? And do you think this is an intentional way to get passengers to not accept the offers, or…?
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