I've had friends tell me that they made hotel reservations and provided their credit card number to "guarantee for late arrival" only to find that no rooms were available when they arrived. If you guarantee your reservation and then cancel, the hotel charges you a fee. If you guarantee your reservation and don't show up, the hotel charges you for the room. If the hotel doesn't have room available for you, it sounds like you are just stuck. I want to be prepared ahead of time if I run into this problem. What are your rights as a consumer? What's the best way to handle this, other than to stand in the lobby and cry or scream?

First, if you guarantee a hotel for late arrival, you usually can cancel without penalty if it is within the time given to cancel the reservations.
Example, we stay at a lot of Marriott's and will guarantee the room for late arrival with our credit card.
Usually they will tell us that if we need to cancel, cancel by a certain time and date to avoid being charged.
Always ask what the cancellation policy is before you make your reservations.
If your friends did guarantee for late arrival and the hotel did not comply,
tell them to call and report this to their credit card company.
One note: Late guarantees are only for day of arrival. You can't check in after midnight and be guaranteed a room, because it is into the next day and the guarantee then becomes void.
I heard the manager of a Springhill Suites explain to a guest who tried to check in at 2 am.

I would check with your hotel. We had a late arrival this past Christmas at the Hilton in Walt Disney World. I even gave them our flight arrival time 11:30pm and when we arrived at close to 11:30pm, we were told our room was not ready yet because we had requested a late arrival. I had to ask exactly how late he thought we would be because we were very close to it being the next day. Needless to say they quickly found a room for us. I was not mad, it just seemed ludicrous to tell me that 11:30pm is not considered a late arrival.

Anyone who has had trouble with a late arrival, or any sort of encounter with the front desk, will enjoy this legendary Powerpoint presentation detailing the experiences of one late arriver, "Yours is a very bad hotel":

http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/DoubleT...les/frame.html

Thanks for the morning chuckle, Anonymous. Very clever!!

I stay in all types of hotels throughout the year.I have yet to book one that did not require a credit card guarantee.I have never heard of a guarantee being "void" at midnight.The room will be held until 6 or 7am the following morning at which time I would have been considered a "no show".At that point in time my credit card would be charged.My tried proven and true method has yet to fail me:If I know I am going to be past 6pm arriving at a hotel, I will call the front desk between 10am and Noon day of arrival.Normally that is when the staff will have performed their "room count" so they know exactly how many rooms they will have available for check in that night.By calling the hotel, it reconfirms my reservation and I always request that they go ahead and "block" a room for me.It works 99% of the time.I actually frequently am told at check in that it is nice to have a guest who knows a little about their business.

I fear that consumer rights on these "guarantee" policies are limited at best.
Situation: guaranteed rental car at Greensboro, N.C. for furniture market -- more than the area can handle. Clearly stated we would be charged the full four day rental if WE didn't show up. We did show up, but OOPS! they were out of cars and none were to be had within at least a hundred miles. Sorry. They said. Shouldn't they have paid us the amount we'd have had to pay if we didn't keep up our end of the bargain? (By the way, they did send us to our hotel and then the market by taxi, and managed to find us a car later that day.) But why are the rules different for the consumer than for the provider?

I've arrived late (as I told them I would) twice to hotels and gotten the "sorry, no rooms left" routine. But fortunately because I started to make a scene, in both cases they managed to find a room after all. The moral -- I think they're holding out the last room for the person who will cause the most trouble -- make sure that person is you.

I've never heard of this midnight rule for late arrival. I think that was the clever idea of a room clerk figuring out what to say when he couldn't find any rooms.

Hotels overbook, and it is not uncommon for someone with a "guaranteed" late arrival to arrive and find that his room has been given to someone else. Whether you have any rights under this situation is a matter of state law, so take a look at the consumer protection or related laws of the state in which the hotel is located.

What a hotel will normally do, and what you should insist that they do, is (i) put you in another hotel of a similar class which is located as reasonably close to their hotel as possible, (2) pay for that room for one night, and (3) get you a room back in their hotel for the next night and all remaining nights of your stay.

The solution we've used, and it has never failed: volunteer you will be late, given them a credit card number and authorize one night charge, and tell them to give you a receipt by mail or email stating your ETA. Take it with you. Actually, the charge shouldn't even be necessary ... we've never had to do it ... and we've never had a problem. But if you're concerned, as friends have been, then have them do the charge.