"Distressed" Hotel Rates Rather Distressing
Last Thursday, we flew from LaGuardia to Portland by way of Dallas on American Airlines. Not the best route, but the price was right--err, free. We were redeeming frequent flyer miles.
Heavy storms altered the flight pattern en route to Dallas, sending the plane south along the Atlantic coast all the way to South Carolina. Bad planning on the part of American then meant that we were low on fuel by this point and needed to stop in lovely Birmingham, Alabama to refuel.
By the time the flight refueled and finally made it to Dallas, our connecting flight to Portland had long since departed. With no additional flights to Portland scheduled, it was clear that we would have to spend the night in Dallas.
This is where we discovered American Airlines' practice of offering hotel rooms (and not in the W Dallas) at "distressed" rates to inconvenienced passengers--oops, sorry: customers. The La Quinta Inn Conference Center in Arlington (a 20+ minute van ride away) took 10 or so of us in, giving us rooms for $56 per night, against the roughly $95 we'd have to pay for our rooms under normal conditions.
It was close to midnight, and the receptionist told us that we could redeem our food vouchers at the Bennigan's next door. Which would have been lovely, had American given us food vouchers to redeem.
[Image via Heather907/Flickr]
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