Let me start by saying I am, er was, a long-time Travelocity customer and booked numerous trips through that website. In recent years the deals didn’t seem as good, and I noticed that AAA.com also offered travel planning. I use the AAA roadside service and gave their travel planning side a try, too.
I’ve used it on and off, haven’t found it to be remarkable but occasionally found some deals. Like this one for Memorial Day weekend when my husband and I decided at the last minute to travel to Nashville for my niece’s high school graduation. It’s about a nine hour drive from where we are in Florida so decided to drive to Atlanta that Friday night and finish the trip Saturday morning.
At www.aaa.com, I used “Free Breakfast” and “Pets Accepted” as hotel search terms. A Hilton returned in the list, in the right location with a great pre-paid rate of $75 for the night. Perfect! Having used pre-paid rates before, selectively of course, I was comfortable with that since we knew our trip was definite.
We arrived late Friday evening and the front desk clerk told me the hotel does not accept pets. While very nice, she was not budging and wouldn’t let us stay there. She said “Travelocity” had not paid them yet and she noted on my reservation cancellation the reason I had to cancel.
You notice I said Travelocity there. Apparently, AAA “partnered” with Travelocity last year and in my opinion, they both did a pretty lousy job of partnering. May 29, two days later, I re-created my search and the same results returned, and I filed an online request for assistance at AAA.com.
The short answer from AAA has been that essentially their search engine returns results based on one term, seemingly the first one on the list. In this case that was “Free Breakfast.” Nowhere on their website do they post a warning telling you that it can only search on one term. Here is the explanation I got from them:
The website will apply multiple search terms and identify exactly which terms from your criteria were matched. If the hotel had allowed pets, it would have identified this as a match along with the free breakfast.
Interestingly, when I search tonight using the same location and same search terms, the Hilton in question does not return. And on some listings (but not all) there is now a “Features Matched” line that I do not recall seeing there before, ever. Is it possible that out of my misfortune came a change in service? Unfortunately too little too late for me.
