Motel 6 Reservation Guarantee - Read the invisible print

The majority of motels and hotels in the United States, including Motel 6 adhere to an unofficial industry standard policy called ‘the walk policy’.

Basically this policy says that if you make a guaranteed reservation (and in some instances a non-guaranteed reservation), and you arrive at your motel to find they CAN’T accommodate your reservation for whatever reason, they WILL get you into a room that night EVEN if it means making arrangements at another hotel, paying for your first night at that alternate hotel and provide or pay for transportation if necessary.

Now first you have to ask yourself why wouldn’t your hotel of choice be able to accommodate your reservation. There’s actually many reasons, such as over booking, rooms being taken out of service due to maintenance issues, computer errors, employee error, etc. This isn’t really about the many reasons it COULD happen, but rather what Motel 6 did to me when it DID happen…. On two separate occasions.

These occurred at the same Motel 6 location at 5110 Interstate Ave, Sacramento, CA 95842. (Update: At the time I wrote this, this Motel 6 location was corporate owned. As of Late 2019, this location is now franchise owned)

Unlike most travelers, I read the fine print. And one of the reasons I don’t use third party companies to book rooms is because most of them won’t or can’t guarantee your reservation. So with most stays, I book directly on the hotels website, to ensure I get that guarantee from their property. As I did with Motel 6, like a dozen times before.

The first time it happened at this location, I had reserved a 2 bed room, yet when I checked in I was told there computer only showed me as booking a 1 bed room. The desk clerk, Stephanie, was non-apologetic saying she had no idea why my reservation was different on her computer. I began searching my emails from my phone to produce my Motel 6 email confirmation, when she stated matter of factly, “it doesn’t matter what confirmation you show me..”, informing me that the 2 bed rooms were not only fully booked but also fully occupied.

Stephanie was polite, while trying to think of an option, then offered to put me in a 1 bed room that night and would have a 2 bed room cleaned as soon as one of the current occupants checked out in the morning. No discount was offered in fact she was going to charge me the same rate as if it were a 2 bed room, so I asked for a discount on the 1 bed room I'd have to stay in that night.

Inconvenient yes, but she was at least attempting to make the situation right, I appreciated that. So I took the discounted 1 bed room, allowing my travel companion to have the bed and me huddled in a corner on the floor with a spare blanket provided by housekeeping.  The next morning I went to the office at 11am and she indeed had a housekeeper cleaning a room for me. By the time I was finished exchanging key cards and re-checking in, the housekeeper called on the walkie talkie to say the room was ready. Problem solved, guest happy and life goes on…..

Later in the year this same situation arises again. My reservation for a 2 bed room was now appearing as a 1 bed room reservation on the motels computer. This time the desk clerk (a new desk clerk, this location has a high turnover. Every time I come here there are different desk clerks) was of no help and had no idea how to handle the situation. Also he was surprisingly uneducated in policies, he was polite but obviously disinterested and unsympathetic.  But when he saw that I was frustrated, he kept his cool and did the only thing he was obviously trained to do… read the computer screen and call someone else.

I produced my confirmation email, and unphased by the error, the desk clerk kept telling me, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, my computer says 1 bedroom’.

Not wanting to sleep on the floor again, I asked to speak with a manger, but there was none on site… at 3pm during the rush of check-ins. He called his manager and left a message on voicemail, time went by and no return call from the manager. I told the desk clerk I would like to use the Guaranteed Reservation option, and be sent to another Motel 6 property.

The desk clerk had NO IDEA what I was talking about, he even said that reservations aren’t guaranteed. Seeing I was getting upset, he called someone he claims was in Guest Services, and told them about my claim that reservations were guaranteed. I showed him on the Motel 6 website, the guarantee that says my reservation would be honored, even if it meant going to another hotel at their expense.

        ‘YOU NEED TO KNOW’ this, if staying at a Motel 6.

I was always under the impression that if you made a guaranteed reservation on their website, you would always get the room TYPE reserved OR the ‘the walk policy’ would go into effect. It’s what it says on their website…. Or does it??? Below is the Motel 6 Guaranteed Reservation policy portion in regards to not honoring your reservation, copy/pasted from the FAQ page of their website, motel6.com on Oct 2019:

If guaranteed with your credit card, your reservation will be held all night for your arrival. If you are unable to guarantee your reservation, your room will be held until 6:00PM (at most locations).

 In the unlikely event that we cannot honor your guaranteed reservation, we will reimburse you for the first night's lodging at a comparable motel, transportation to that establishment (if needed) and a telephone call to your home or office to notify others of your new location.

To me that says, if I can’t get my 2 bed room as reserved, then Motel 6 will get me to a motel/hotel that does have 2 bed room… right??? WRONG!!!!

First off the Guest Service person had no idea what I was talking about and had never heard of a ‘guaranteed reservation’ policy. Then adding that all they could do was give me the 1 bed room or switch me to a 2 bed room the following day IF AVAILABLE, which it wasn’t.  She also explained that my reservation was downgraded to a 1 bed room by a KNOWN glitch in the on-site reservation system.

She had just admitted it was their systems fault so I reasserted myself, “If you know the downgrade was your reservation systems fault, why are you NOT trying to make this right by….. “

I never got to finish my sentence, she interrupted and said, “Oh no, it's not our fault, it's the reservation systems fault…. We have NO CONTROL over the reservation system.”

That's when I realized I wasn’t talking to anyone in Guest relations but rather another desk clerk, likely from a different shift or another area Motel 6 property. I suggested that at the very least I should be comp’d a second 1 bed room for the night so I wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor, NOPE!

NO discount for the foul up and NO upgrade to a different type 2 bed room either… which I later found out they did have a 2 bed room with a fridge available. I was done, this was ridiculous, so I said fine and gave him back the phone.

At this point I just wanted to wash 200 miles of Greyhound off so I asked him to call one of the other properties to see if they had a 2 bed room available, there wasn’t. So broken and defeated I bowed to the absurdness of the situation and the inevitability of my sleeping on the floor for the next 3 nights.  ‘We’ll check into the 1 bed room’, I told him.

Then as a final metaphorical slap in my face… the downgraded 1 bed room cost 6 cents MORE than what my 2 bed room email confirmation stated…. ‘Really, how can it cost more?’, I asked him.

He replied, ‘I don’t know, that's what it shows on my computer’.

So just fed up, I paid then went to my room and spent the next 30 minutes on the phone with a real Guest Relations who claimed she would file a report and send it off to the District and General Managers… I won’t hold my breath. I was also told these things by her:

The Guaranteed RESERVATION Policy  is not completely spelled out on the website. The actual guarantee is, they will get me a room, any room of their choice at their property. IF they are completely FULL and absolutely NO ROOMS are available, they will then and ONLY then begin the process of first contacting other area Motel 6 properties, then as a LAST resort will implement ‘the walk policy’, of paying your first night and transportation to another hotel chain.

So the room TYPE (1 bed, 2 bed, a suite, with or w/o a fridge, whatever) IS NOT guaranteed, the guarantee is that they will get a roof over your head. However let me point out… that neither desk clerks  that I spoke with had ANY idea about this policy, or they would have been able to correct me on the spot by explaining the policy to me…. They couldn’t, didn’t and probably wouldn’t have even if they did know the policy

The Guest Relations Dept also told me that after checking my reservation, they confirmed it was for a 2 bed room and someone at the property location downgraded it to a 1 bed room. Why someone at this property would downgrade my reservation she didn’t know. Perhaps this is the ‘Known Glitch’ I was informed of.

JUST FYI - this location has a 14 day stay policy. Meaning that you can stay 14 days, but you must not return to the property for 30 days. The guest services rep informed me this is in violation of Motel 6 policy. According to her, Motel 6 policy states you may stay 28 consecutive days then you must leave the property for 2 days before returning.

This policy is even reflected in their online reservation system which allows you to make a reservation of up to 28 days. (UPDATE: online reservation system at Motel 6.com no longer allows you to make a reservation at this location for longer than 14 consecutive days).

This guaranteed reservation policy is not a law, unlike airlines that have legal obligations to get you to where you’re going, the motel industry has no government oversight in this area. It was the motel and hotel industry that created and defined ‘the walk policy’ as a courtesy to guests. Each motel, hotel, inn, etc may interpret ‘the walk policy’ differently, based on any number of conditions there particular company chooses.

Now maybe the wording of this Motel 6 reservation guarantee is misleading, perhaps I’m reading too much into it, I don’t know. I do know that to ME, when it says your ‘reservations will be honored or they will get you a room at a comparable motel’, that means the reservation (number of beds) I MADE will be honored or I’ll get a 2 bed room somewhere else at Motel 6 expense (the first night). NOT my reservation will be honored with a 1 bed room, and I will just have to share with my travel companion.

What if I needed this 2 bed room because I was traveling with a female co-worker or platonic female friend. Would they still expect us to share a bed just because of a reservation error that MOTEL 6 admitted to making? Or what if the 2 bed room was for a pair of couples, would one couple then have to sleep on the floor? I can’t be the only one this has happened to, feel free to comment below about your Motel 6 experiences. Perhaps its time to hold the motel industry accountable the way we hold the airline industry accountable.