A hotel that takes payment and then turns you away at the desk has not made an administrative slip. It has failed to perform a contract it was paid to perform, and the Act treats that plainly.
Overbooking is not a defence
Hotels sometimes explain the refusal by saying the property was overbooked, as though that were an act of God. It is a commercial decision to sell more rooms than exist, taken by the hotel, in the expectation that enough guests will not turn up. When the gamble fails, the loss belongs to the person who took it. Being walked to a different property is the same failure in a politer form, and being moved to a lower category than the one you paid for is a downgrade whose measure is the difference in tariff.
The other frequent line is that the rate was non refundable. That answers a cancellation by the guest. It says nothing about a refusal by the hotel, and a term that lets a hotel keep the money for a room it declined to provide is an unreasonable condition putting the consumer at a disadvantage, which is the language of Section 2(46) on unfair contracts.
Whom to name when you booked through a platform
Name both, and do it deliberately rather than defensively. Section 2(17) defines an electronic service provider as a person who provides technologies or processes enabling a product seller to advertise or sell to a consumer, and it expressly includes any online market place. The Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, notified on 23 July 2020 under the Act, put real obligations on such a platform, including a grievance officer who must acknowledge a complaint within forty eight hours and redress it within one month, and a duty on the seller not to refuse a refund where the service was not provided as agreed.
| Who did what | Why they belong in the complaint |
|---|---|
| The hotel took the money directly and refused the room | The service provider. It is the primary opposite party and there is nothing to complicate it |
| The platform took the money and passed on a booking the hotel says it never received | The failure is at the platform's end. It collected consideration and did not deliver the confirmation it sold |
| The platform confirmed a rate the hotel refuses to honour | Both. The platform held out the rate and the hotel refused performance, and the allocation between them is their problem, not yours |
| The platform badged the property or vouched for it under its own brand programme | The platform's own representation is in issue, separately from the hotel's failure |
There is a provision in the 2020 Rules that is very useful here and almost nobody uses it. On a written request made by a consumer after a purchase, a marketplace entity has to give the consumer information about the seller, including the principal geographic address of its headquarters and branches, its website details, its email address and any other information necessary for communication with the seller for effective dispute resolution. Send that request before you draft anything, because it produces the correct legal name and address of the hotel company, and a complaint served at the right address is a complaint that moves. The answer on joining a marketplace and a seller deals with how the two are pleaded together.
What to claim
Section 39(1) allows the return of the charges paid with such interest as the commission decides, compensation for loss or injury suffered due to the negligence of the opposite party, punitive damages under the express proviso, and adequate costs. Quantify the difference between what you paid and what the substitute cost. Add the transport to it, the meals you had to buy because you arrived somewhere with no arrangement, and any specific loss that follows from the facts, such as missing the wedding you had travelled for or the first morning of a conference you had paid to attend.
- The confirmation voucher with the booking reference, the room category and the rate, exactly as it was issued
- The payment proof, showing who received the money, the hotel or the platform
- Something recorded at the moment of refusal: an email sent from the lobby, a photograph of the desk, a note of the name of the person who refused
- The receipt and rate card for the substitute accommodation
- The written request to the platform for the seller's particulars, and its reply
- Your grievance to the hotel and to the platform, with the ticket numbers, and their responses
The single most useful thing you can do is create a contemporaneous record while you are standing there. A complaint filed nine months later against a hotel that now says the guest simply did not arrive is very hard to prove. An email sent from the lobby at 11.40 that night, saying the room was refused and naming the person who refused it, is close to unanswerable. On forum, the consideration paid is the room tariff, so this is a District Commission matter, and Section 34(2)(d) lets you file where you reside rather than where the hotel stands.