Hotel: Conference Rate

Bizarre experiences trying to book into Sheraton Music City Hotel. Initially, I booked on-line for Mon night thru Fri night at the conference rate of $189. This corresponded to airline reservations that I had already made to fly in on Monday and fly out on Saturday.

I think the system may have become befuddled because I started out using my wife’s existing “Marriott” account and then it became clear that that would not work so I created my own “Marriott” account which I had not had before. [Marriott-Sheraton are now the same operation]. I seemed to complete the process, but I was not sure because I got no confirmation by email and my new on-line account had no entry for any booking.

So to straighten this out, after about an hour, I called [Marriott-Sheraton]. The person I was speaking to had no record of my having made any reservation. So we started the process anew. But she told me that I could not get Monday night at the conference rate. It was going to cost $290 for that night. I argued about this issue and quoted the XDC web page but to no avail. Irritated, I booked Tues night through Friday night at the conference rate because it was not worth it for me to spend the extra money for the Monday night. Then I changed my airline reservations to match the new hotel reservation time frame.

Then, an hour later lo and behold, I got an email for the original reservation of Mon through Fri all at the conference rate. It did not show up on my on-line account. The second reservation, Tues - Friday showed up in my on-line account immediately with a different confirmation number. So now I had two reservations. I called again and killed the first booking because I did not want to go through the hassle of changing my flights again.

I tell this story because of my frustration, but also because of the issue of getting the conference rate for Monday night. Because of this “saga” I had the experience of being able to get the conference rate for Monday initially and then subsequently not being able to get the conference rate for that night. Yet it was clear that there were rooms available.

The website says:

This is a bit of a heads up. Be prepared to have difficulty getting the promised XCD rate for the days around the conference.

I have seen similar trouble.
It can happen that your first reservation got the last room under the Xojo contingent, which does not block all rooms in the hotel.

Anyway, it ma be good to reserve early with a long duration and later adjust to real dates when you have the flights.

Well, this time I skip the rental car and use the free shuttle from the hotel to get there. :slight_smile:

I’m sorry to hear about your frustration. I had not heard of anyone having any trouble but I will look into this immediately and get it resolved so no one else has any trouble.