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Southwest Hotels Complaint

lawnguyen
Explorer C

I recently discovered that I could earn over 10000 SWA points which would also go towards companion status by booking through southwesthotels.. I made a prepaid reservation at the Renaissance Hotel in Las Vegas for 2 nights and I arrived at 3:30PM to check in. The front desk agent said she could not find my reservation. I showed her my receipt from southwesthotels and I still could not check in. They made me call southwesthotels so I did. This process took about 90 minutes to confirm a reservation that I prepaid for. The person on the phone alone could not take care of this, because they had to have another department do it.. They had to fax the hotel a letter proving I made the reservation. I had no problems with a reservation I made a week before through them, but this time it was beyond frustrating. This left a very poor taste in my mouth and I will never book another room through them again.. 

5 REPLIES 5

Re: Southwest Hotels Complaint

dfwskier
Aviator A

Hi.  

 

I can unerstand your frustration..

 

As  understand it, booking.com actually  books hotel reservations maed on the SW webssite. So southwest just provides a platform for booking.com to use. It sounds like they failed to notify the hotel of your reservtaion.

 

If your post was intended to notify SW of the problem, you need to be advised that these formus are peer to peer *traveler to traveler" in nature.  Your best bet would be to contact SW as mentioned below:

 

https://www.southwest.com/contact-us/contact-us.html?clk=GFOOTER-CUSTOMER-CONTACT-US

 

Southwest needs to know if for no other reason than it appears booking.com is giving Southwest a bad name..

 

DId you get the 10,000 RR points?

Re: Southwest Hotels Complaint

lawnguyen
Explorer C

I took your advice and reached out to SWA customer service with the link you provided. They left me a voicemail and also replied via email.. I supposed the apology was sincere by southwest but it would not be enough for me to continue booking hotels through them. The customer service team at southwesthotels/booking.com and whoever I spoke to was extremly unprofessional and this type of debacle is unacceptable for someone who travels as often as I do. I have not received my SWA points yet as it can take up to 8 weeks. I stayed at a Courtyard Marriott in Anaheim the weekend before this trip and received my points (6,000 points) roughly 5 days after checking out. 


This was the reply from southwest airlines customer service. 

 

Dear Lawrence,

Thank you for reaching out to us. I apologize that I was unable to reach you via phone to speak with you personally—as the concerns of our A-List Preferred Customers are of the utmost importance to us—and I appreciate the opportunity to respond in writing so as not to delay our response.

I'm so sorry to hear that the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel was initially unable to locate the accommodations you booked on SouthwestHotels.com. Our goal is to be a “one-stop shop” for our Customers, and we offer the option to book other travel needs (besides air transportation) on our website. We hope that Customers will enjoy the convenience of shopping for all of their travel needs in one place, as well as the opportunity to earn Rapid Rewards Points for qualifying stays.

As you may now be aware, when a Customer books a hotel on SouthwestHotels.com, the reservation is processed and managed by Booking.com. Since Southwest only provides air transportation, we rely on Booking.com to assist and manage our Customers' hotel reservations. Regardless, we truly regret your disappointment with the quality of service you received. Please know that your feedback has been taken to heart.

We hope the issues you experienced won't deter you from traveling with us in future, and we look forward to sharing the skies with you on Friday for your trip to Houston.

Sincerely,

Katie Anderson, Southwest Airlines

 

 

 

Re: Southwest Hotels Complaint

bec102896
Aviator A

@lawnguyen

 

Sorry to hear about your recent experience with using southwest hotels 

 

as already said southwest uses booking.com for hotels and I'm guessing there was an issue notifying the hotel that you booked by booking.com southwest just sells them. 

 

to echo what @dfwskier said I would call southwest customer relations so they can look in to the issue and also make sure you get the 10,000 points or however many you should have earned as I know it says you can earn up to 10,000 a night so just want to make sure it wasn't one of those places that only earns you a point per dollar but if you didn't get the points they would be the best department to talk to so they can investigate. They would also be the best people to pass on your complaint to booking.com for investigation as well to see what went wrong and to see what can be done to fix this issues and make sure it doesn't happen again. 

 

Hope your future travel experiences go smoothly!  

Blake 

Re: Southwest Hotels Complaint

lawnguyen
Explorer C

Hi Blake,

 

Yes I understand that Southwest Airlines outsources their hotel booking with booking.com, and they can only do so much. The point I wanted to make is if Southwest is going be using booking.com, they need make sure they that they live up to the same customer service that Southwest Airlines is known for and deliver the same guest satisfaction. They did nothing to go out of their way to make up for their mistakes and causing inconveniences to me. Southwest airlines customer service was very sorry for this and I have yet to hear back from booking.com despite multiple emails. Again, for someone who travels as often as I do, this is unacceptable therefore will never book hotels through them again. 

 

Re: Southwest Hotels Complaint

dfwskier
Aviator A

Hi again.

 

The fact that booking.com hasn't contacted you is pretty disappointing. I'd advise e-mailing them, AND slamming them on twitter, facebook, YELP, and any other on-line rating platform you can think of. Bad public press does wonders in encouraging companies to be responsive.

 

I fully understand why you never want anything to do with the company again, but it appears this was your first bad experience with it.  Only you can say whether or not this experience was so aggregious that it deserves "one strike and you are out." Booking.com finally did rectify the problem, admitedly at great discomfort to you.

 

10,000 points spent on a wanna get away fare is roughly worth $150. Only you can say whether or not your experience  was so distasteful that you are willing to forgo that type of opportunity in the future.