A Hotel Gave Me Connecting Rooms… Then I Walked In On Someone Else In Their Room

Okay – I get that sometimes mistakes happen, and I don’t want to overly call out a particular hotel, but I did want to share this somewhat amusing anecdote. Like I said, it wasn’t a big deal to us (though I wonder about the guy we walked in on). I’m sure it was just a mistake by the desk clerk (who seemed kind of new) and like I said, we thought it was more funny than anything else.

Trying To Book Connecting Rooms

We were staying at a hotel that didn’t have a family room like our previous two hotels in London and Paris

(SEE ALSO: Marriott Courtyard Paris Gare de Lyon Hotel Review)

(SEE ALSO: Holiday Inn Express London Hammersmith Review)

So instead, I looked to book two rooms. When I have to book 2 rooms, I ask for connecting rooms, since that lets us put the kids in the room and my wife and I in the other. Although our kids are getting older, we don’t quite feel great about (most of) them staying on their own.

In this case, I tried to get connecting rooms in 3 different ways:

1. On my reservation, in “special requests”, I asked for our two rooms to be connecting
2. When the hotel emailed me a few days before our stay welcoming us, I replied asking for the reservations to be connected
3. When we got to the hotel, i asked for connecting rooms

Walking In On Someone In Their Room

In this case, when we got to the hotel, they said there were no connecting rooms. But when I asked again, the desk clerk hit some buttons and checked some things and eventually said that he had booked us into 2 connecting rooms – one with 1 queen and one with 2 twins. We got our room keys and headed up to the 5th floor.

I entered the first room and took some pictures of the room.

Then we went out and I used my key to enter the 2nd room. But as I opened up the door, I saw a guy sitting on his bed. He was quite startled, and I quickly shut the door and went back down to the lobby (sorry, no pics! 😀 )

He clearly didn’t read my article about how to stop people from breaking into your hotel room…

Why Is Booking Connecting Rooms So Hard?

I’ve written about this before, but I really don’t understand why it’s so hard (like, practically impossible) to book connecting or adjoining rooms. From my understanding, most people traveling alone (or with smaller groups) actually do not WANT adjoining / connecting rooms. It’s louder and potentially less secure. So why aren’t they available for people that want them? Unless it’s something where the hotel is completely full (though I didn’t think that was the case here).

In this case, when we went back down to the front desk, the clerk apologized and said that it was a mistake and there were no adjoining rooms available, so he put us in rooms that were next to each other (but not adjoining).

The Bottom Line

A hotel desk clerk mistakenly gave us a room key to a room that was already occupied. So when we entered in the room, there was already someone there just hanging out on his bed. Thankfully it was something where we were able to quickly leave the room, go down to the front desk, and get a replacement room.

Every walked in on someone else in their hotel room? Share your stories in the comments below

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