One Hotel Has Canceled Dozens of Reservations for the Solar Eclipse

With the solar eclipse coming on Monday, millions of people have made travel plans to visit the cities in the path of totality. Some of these people made these reservations far in advance – even as far as 2 years in advance. But, one hotel has been cancelling those reservations – some just days before the event.

Hotel Cancels Dozens of Reservations for the Solar Eclipse

While it is presently looking like the totality will not be visible for millions in its path due to cloudy conditions on Monday, those who planned far in advance obviously had no way to know this.

Hotels have known that this day was coming and many upped their prices to reflect the demand (and the NYS AG’s office is looking into price gouging complaints). I had been surprised that there were still many hotels bookable for Sunday and Monday of this next week even up to a month ago – albeit at very high prices (a Super 8 for $799 for the night?!).

I live near Buffalo, work near Rochester, and grew up in Rochester so this is an exciting time for me and my family and we don’t even need to leave our house to see it (or not, depending on the clouds). But, in both cities, over 1 million visitors are on their way here to see the solar eclipse on Monday and many started getting cancellation e-mails from one particular hotel – the Aloft Buffalo Airport.

E-mails and phone calls for comment from the hotel’s management staff from multiple media outlets have gone unanswered after they started canceling the reservations of many.

One travel agency had reserved 100 rooms between the Aloft Buffalo Airport and the Hampton Inn and Suites Buffalo Airport all the way back in 2022 and had a signed contract with those hotels for the 200 guests that the Sugar Tours Inc company from New Jersey had booked. Some of the travelers they booked this travel for are coming from as far away as Australia.

However, the Aloft Buffalo Airport hotel canceled all those reservations a month ago. This happened after Sugar Tours had e-mailed back and forth with the property to go over the various logistics for bringing their customers to the hotel. No explanation was given in the cancellation and a staff member told the tour company over the phone “we’re canceling your contracts and there’s no ands, ifs or buts.”

The Visit Buffalo Niagara association helped the tour company book other rooms but at a cost of $150 – 200 more per room. The tour company is paying for this themselves – a total of $30,000. They are looking into their legal options on this matter with the Aloft Buffalo Airport property.

Other smaller groups also had their reservations canceled by this hotel. One traveler and his siblings planned a family reunion in Buffalo with some booking the property through Booking.com and others booking right through Aloft – back in May of 2023. In spite of booking so far ahead, the manager sent a cancelation e-mail that “Due to high online traffic, our reservations systems ended up overbooking some of our properties, affecting upcoming reservations that had been booked recently up to four weeks prior.”

In spite of the e-mail wording making it sound like only reservations booked over the past 4 weeks were canceled, this was not the case. Honestly, if a property is so dependent on automated systems confirming availability for a massive, known event like this, they are doing it wrong. Everyone knows systems can glitch and have problems and be vulnerable (especially Marriott, of which Aloft is a brand, with the breaches they have suffered). There should absolutely have been human interaction with the reservation system to make sure that this kind of thing didn’t happen.

But, I have seen this happen with other properties and blaming the reservation system is often just the easiest way to be greedy. Hotels obviously overbook, especially for something like this where people may cancel and then they have a very expensive room available and possibly no one to book it just days away. But, when it gets closer, or past the cancellation period for certain reservations, the hotels realize people actually do plan on coming and then they have a problem.

I really hope that all of these customers get some kind of reimbursement from Aloft for this travel mess-up. However, if any of these people cancel their trip as a result of this and the clouds really do prevent the eclipse from being viewed, it may end up a happy mistake for those customers.