Woman had to pay hotel twice as she didn't have her late husband's ID

A Whangārei woman had to pay twice to stay in a hotel because she didn’t have her late husband’s ID on her to check into their room.

When Kitty Sorensen's husband Charlie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he badly wanted to travel to Oz to watch his favourite league team, the Manly Sea Eagles, play.

Charlie booked and paid for the couple's flights and accommodation through the online travel agency Expedia.

But in May, just months before their journey together, Charlie died. Kitty then had to make the difficult decision about whether to still travel to Australia, eventually deciding: “I'll go over there, watch his team and it'll be something that he'd want me to do as well."

When she arrived at the Mercure in Brookvale to check-in, a staff member asked to see her late husband’s ID, as the booking was under his name.

“I was sort of like, hit with a brick wall and I went, ‘but it's paid for?’. And he said ‘I still need to see Mr Sorensen's ID’.”

Kitty says she explained she didn’t have Charlie’s ID on her and that he had passed away two months earlier, but “they didn't bat an eyelid”.

She says she tried to prove her connection to the booking by showing her passport - as she and Charlie shared the same surname - but that wasn’t enough proof for the concierge, who advised she’d need to ring Expedia to change the booking into her name.

Kitty says she couldn’t give an itinerary number to Expedia because she didn’t have internet on her phone to access her emails.

Feeling exhausted and out of options, Kitty paid another $674 dollars for a different room, on top of the $773 she and Charlie had already spent on their three-night stay there.

When Kitty did get through to Expedia and explained the situation, she says she was assured she'd be refunded for the original booking.

But after two months, she still hadn’t got her money back and Expedia had changed its tune, saying the Mercure wouldn’t give refunds for cancellations.

“I didn't actually cancel it, I just wanted to check in,” says Kitty. When she contacted the Mercure directly, she says a staff member implied it was her fault because she’d chosen to pay for another room instead of changing the original booking into her name.

So Kitty went to Fair Go to put it right.

Fair Go took Kitty's case to Accor, the parent company of the Mercure hotel, who investigated the situation with staff, and told us:

“We have a check-in procedure in place and recognise that, in this instance, our teams should have accepted Mrs Sorenson’s booking, given the relationship to her husband and the circumstances surrounding her visit. "

And they, “sincerely apologise to Mrs Sorensen for any distress caused. We also apologise for the lack of communication, this was an oversight by the hotel, which we are addressing with the team”.

The Mercure's general manager also gave Kitty a call to apologise and to offer not just a refund of the original booking, but a refund of the second room Kitty paid for as well.

A spokesperson for Expedia sent their condolences to Kitty and told Fair Go that when a traveller has concerns, they advocate to find the best solution possible, but they said in this case, it was down to the hotel’s decision-making.