4 + 4 + 4 = 11.
Obviously it doesn’t, but one of the hotel reservations I made recently ended up using that wonky math. That mistake almost gave us a nasty surprise, but I thankfully noticed the error just in time and so was able to (sort of) fix it.
Here’s what happened.
After getting back from Bali, Shae and I spent a few days in Portsmouth VA before heading up to Richmond. I knew I was going to have to spend quite a bit of time working once we got back from our vacation, so we figured we’d stay in Richmond for longer than we normally would so that we’d have enough time to explore the city in addition to me working.
When looking at our hotel options, there was a Candlewood Suites that was good value on points, so we booked a stay there. Candlewood Suites is one of IHG’s brands and I have both their old and new credit cards. Their new credit card offers every 4th night free on award stays, so I decided to book 12 nights there – that way we’d get the 4th, 8th and 12th nights free.
Thank You Google Calendar
Everything was fine until a few days before we were due to check out. I was looking at my Google Calendar for something completely unrelated to our stay, but noticed this at the top:
One of the nice features of relying on many of Google’s services is that they work well together. When I book a hotel, the email confirmation goes to my Gmail address. That in turn auto-populates my Google Calendar with details of the stay as you can see above.
The image above might look innocuous, but it was a bad sign. That’s because it showed our stay at the Candlewood Suites ending on August 30, but that our next stay at a Hyatt Place wasn’t starting until August 31. That was weird as it should’ve looked something like this:
As you can see from those reservations, we were due to check out from the Hyatt Place Milford/New Haven on July 2 and check in to the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor on the same day.
That meant the blue bar on Google Calendar indicating our stay at the Candlewood Suites should’ve gone as far as August 31, not August 30. Thinking that Gmail must’ve somehow messed up, I checked the reservation I made but alas – it was me that had messed up. When booking our stay, I’d somehow managed to enter the wrong check out date:
Finding Somewhere To Stay
As soon as I realized we were due to check out on August 30 rather than the 31st, I tried booking an extra night at the same hotel. Although it meant we’d have to pay an extra 10,000 IHG Rewards Club points rather than it being free, there wasn’t anything we could do about it as it was far too late to fix our original reservation.
That didn’t work out as planned though as the hotel was sold out of award nights. The hotel had been full during our stay due to film crews for The Walking Dead and The Good Lord Bird also staying there as they were shooting in Richmond. We were therefore stuck having to check out on August 30.
Seeing as we travel with our dog Truffles, if we moved somewhere different we’d have to pay a new pet fee which wouldn’t be worth it for one night. We therefore decided to book an additional night at our next hotel – the Hyatt Place Roanoke – as that meant we wouldn’t be charged an additional dog fee.
That solution was a little disappointing though. There were quite a few things we still wanted to see and do in Richmond when I noticed this mistake, so it meant we had one less day to do them in. It also meant we’d miss out on going back to the Farmers Market on the Saturday as there were a couple of things we wanted to buy from there.
Conclusion
So here I am, typing this post from the couch at the Hyatt Place Roanoke. Not being careful enough when making a hotel reservation cost us an extra 5,000 World of Hyatt points and the opportunity to spend more time in Richmond. On the positive side, it means you get to read about another of our (well, my) road trip mistakes!
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