[arcticbull]

That's a surprise. Hotels definitely do overbook however they'll usually not leave you stranded, they "walk" you to a competitor property that they then pay for. Here's a whole write-up on it [1] from the New York Times. It's been going on forever but you may only have noticed it more recently as occupancy rates are up. I've yet to be "walked" but it does happen. Nothing particularly sketchy going on.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/business/hotels-overbooke...

[glangdale]

I got walked from my hotel near RSA Conference one year (Westin San Francisco Market Street) to the Parc 55. As compensation I got a free day, but since my employer was paying, it wasn't much of a compensation.

It sounds petty but having paid for a room, being exhausted from a Pacific flight and being moved to a hotel twice the walk from the conference (important if you're going to be back and forth all day) was mildly annoying.

I'm not 100% sure - but the one time I was walked I had picked the cheapest available room. You know those bullshitty-looking price differences where you can book on floors 9-11 for X and floors 12-14 for X+5? I suspected I had signalled my place on the hierarchy by picking the cheapest room available. Subsequently, especially while on an expense account (sorry, Intel! :-) ) I always picked the ever-so-slightly more expensive room and have never been walked again, even in the middle of conference season. This may be bogus reasoning, of course.