Late checkin to the Beatles Room



After spending the day with friends in San Francisco and a pleasant meal at a French restaurant, I got dropped off at the hotel in Menlo Park where I had my booking for the next week. My friends drove off, back on the road to San Francisco and I went to check in. Unfortunately, I didn’t exist.
Call me over confident, but I’ve always been convinced of my own reality. I’ve also tended to believe that when I have an email clasped in my grubby mitt which shows a “Confirmed” hotel reservation, I have a room waiting for me. It may be late, I may be tired, the room may be bedecked with garlands and rose petals, or it may be a dingy space with two beds, one of them occupied by a finance director who snores like a chainsaw, but I will have a place to sleep.

But not tonight. Tonight, there was no room at the inn. Like a latter-day Joseph, I wondered if they might have any other rooms to put me up in. I could see through to the management office, where on the whiteboard was scrawled the legend “61% occupancy”. I had faith. That should mean 39% of their rooms were free.

It did not. None of their rooms were free. I called my travel agent back in Poland who had made the booking and explained. She explained the room had been booked. I explained that it wasn’t there. It was a non-room. Two more people arrived and got checked in. I passed my phone to the guy on reception, and he spoke to Poland. Still, there was no resolution.

An enormous (tall and built for doing something outside with heavy things, rather than a spherical chap trying to emulate Bibendum) man strode into the reception and asked if there were any rooms. The reception were all distracted, and I explained that the hotel was sold out and my booking had been lost. He expressed surprise, as he’s booked a room there through Egencia just ten minutes ago.

I knew, from my many years of bitter experience, that the seamless line you think Expedia draws between your smartphone and the hotel booking system is in fact a ramshackle rats’ nest of hope, incompetence, ancient fax machines and occasional triumph. To rub salt into the wound, the guy on reception told me they always had problems with Expedia, but never with Carlson Wagonlit. Of course they didn’t have problems. I was the one with a problem because it was 11:15 at night and I had no room to stay in, and I didn’t really feel I could presume on my friends to turn around and drive back down the highway just because the hotel had messed up.

The woman in Poland spoke to the receptionist. He went off to clean some rooms that weren’t ready. I didn’t care about cleanliness. I just wanted a bed. The woman in Poland put me on hold and began ringing around other hotels in the area, because there was bound to be lots of capacity, what with the huge tennis tournament today. Oh dear.

I waited and listened to on-hold music, and eventually Poland told me I had a room four miles down the road, and then the hotel staff vanished again so I was on the verge of calling myself a taxi when the enormous man offered to drive me in his truck, as he had nothing better to do until his room was ready.

At least, I hope they had a room for him. Great would the vengeance visited upon them otherwise – not everyone is a diffident chap like me. So I hopped in his truck and we drove down El Camino Real, and I regaled him with stories of Singapore and why they banned chewing gum, a faintly ridiculous story, and he told me a little about generators, which was his job and the reason for the huge truck. I invited him in for a drink to thank him, but company trucks allow for no R & R, and so at the Crowne Plaza my saviour drove off and I went, with some trepidation, to check in.

This time, I did have existential qualities and after a few minutes of rigmarole (it is always a struggle to check in at midnight) I got my key and went upstairs to my room. The Beatles Room.

It took me a while to find it, because all the other rooms have boring names like 808 (actually a pretty good synthesiser) or 809 (unremarkable in musical circles). But mine was the Beatles Room, possibly to make me feel at home after this arduous journey. Inside, the walls are covered in Beatles memorabilia although sadly John and Yoko aren’t in the massive bed. It’s half past midnight and I’m hoping to wake up tomorrow morning.


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