Airbnb Rival Sonder Abruptly Shuts Down, Orders Guests To Leave (cbsnews.com) 46
Sonder, a short-term rental company and former Airbnb rival, abruptly went out of business after Marriott ended its licensing deal on Nov. 9 -- leaving guests scrambling as they were told to vacate their rooms immediately. From a report: Paul Strack, 63, visiting Boston from Little Rock, Arkansas, told CBS News he received an email from Marriott on Sunday about his Sonder stay, but he initially mistook it for a scam. The email said that Marriott's agreement with Sonder had ended, and that "we are unable to continue your reservation beyond today."
"[W]e are kindly requesting that you check out of the property as soon as you are able," the email read, according to a copy obtained by CBS News. Because he had mistaken it for spam, he ignored it. But on Monday, after exploring Boston and returning to the family's accommodation at the end of the day, Strack found his room's door wide open and his family's belongings packed up and left in a hallway.
[...] Sonder on Monday said it would wind down operations immediately, and that it expects to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy to liquidate its U.S. assets. The company describes itself as a global operator of "premium, design-forward apartments and intimate boutique hotels serving the modern traveler" that has faced financial challenges related to its agreement with Marriott, which the hotel chain terminated on Sunday.
"[W]e are kindly requesting that you check out of the property as soon as you are able," the email read, according to a copy obtained by CBS News. Because he had mistaken it for spam, he ignored it. But on Monday, after exploring Boston and returning to the family's accommodation at the end of the day, Strack found his room's door wide open and his family's belongings packed up and left in a hallway.
[...] Sonder on Monday said it would wind down operations immediately, and that it expects to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy to liquidate its U.S. assets. The company describes itself as a global operator of "premium, design-forward apartments and intimate boutique hotels serving the modern traveler" that has faced financial challenges related to its agreement with Marriott, which the hotel chain terminated on Sunday.
Huge Impact (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure that this was a huge impact to all four of Sonder's users.
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I'm sure that this was a huge impact to all four of Sonder's users.
Apparently it was popular with Marriott Elite Rewards members. There are a lot of angry people in their forums.
That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a situation like this where the occupants aren't at fault, you honour the reservation for the duration of the stay, and you comp the rest of the stay ("It's on the house.")
In this way you generate a ton of good-will for the Marriott, and positive word of mouth advertising that you only wish you could buy on demand. Marriott decided to take the low road and kick the occupants out mid-stay. Bad form.
Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:2)
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so he should at least called the frontdesk
Do you actually investigate every spammy email you get?
If so, when do you sleep?
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> it's also in the user, as he got a mail during his stay
People check email on vacation?
What an odd thing to demand.
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Its not a matter of who it is "on". It is a matter of intelligent handling of the affair from a HOSPITALITY company. This was an opportunity to build a good-will relationship with people staying at Marriot, which could be easily spun into a positive press event for the company.
But "enlightened capitalism" is a fiction it seems.
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No one was staying at a Marriott... Actually some people were, and Marriott resolved their problems already. Marriott was little more then a partner on points and a co-mingled booking system.
Why not blame the credit card company who you used to pay while you're at it. They have about as close of a relationship to this mess.
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The busiest Sonder I've ever visited had at most two employees in the building. Most of them, you'll never see an employee at all. I've only seen staff in downtown Chicago and in Manhattan and I've stayed at 14 different locations.
If you were looking for a live person to ask, you probably wouldn't find one.
On the other hand, they do get back to you instantly if you message them about something.
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This is not on Marriott, but on Sonder. And in this case it's also in the user, as he got a mail during his stay, so he should at least called the frontdesk to see what's up, niw saying he thought it was spam is of course just an excuse to try to get some sympathy. Of course I do feel for people when such a thing happens, but it's a business, not a social institute. And those accomodations need to generate money.
In all your life, have you ever gotten an email from someone in the middle of a trip saying that your pre-arranged hotel stay is cancelled, and you need to leave the room ASAP? That's not something anybody would ever expect to get legitimately.
Moreover, something like this would be *massively* disruptive to the person's vacation, possibly literally forcing them to live out of their cars, depending on when it happened and how busy the hotels were at the time. Even if you didn't ignore it, if your only opti
Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:2)
I dont know if you are being a tool on purpose or not.
In case you aren't, let me spell this out as clear as crystal:
- These aren't Marriott properties
- These aren't Marriott bookings
- Marriott has zero control over this whatsoever.
Just because you booked your Sonder stay in the Marriott app, doesnt mean Marriott is responsible for the booking.
Does it suck that Marriott entered into this agreement with this scummy company? Absolutely. But expecting them to somehow wave a magic wand and extend your stay *at a
Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:2)
In other words itâ(TM)s like Walmart selling things on their website which actually arenâ(TM)t fulfilled by Walmart to which they absolve themselves from any liability - such as misrepresented stock levels. Or those âoenews articlesâ linked on msnbc that are actually just third party click bait.
Modern capitalism scum.
Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:2)
Actually its nothing like that at all.
Its more like paying for food at a restaurant using your Visa card and then complaining to Visa when it tastes bad.
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- These aren't Marriott bookings
So why is Marriott the one telling them that they have to vacate? That kind of notification should be coming from the property owner or Sonder. And more to the point, it shouldn't matter if Marriott cancels their contract with Sonder, because Sonder got paid already, or should have.
Just because you booked your Sonder stay in the Marriott app, doesnt mean Marriott is responsible for the booking.
Actually, it does. In fact, that's possibly way worse, because unless they kicked you out to an outside website, Marriott literally took a payment from you.
None of this makes the slightest bit of sense. Either Marriott took t
Re: That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:2)
They didn't.
Sonder did.
You clearly have zero clues whats going on here.
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They didn't.
They did. From the summary:
Paul Strack, 63, visiting Boston from Little Rock, Arkansas, told CBS News he received an email from Marriott on Sunday about his Sonder stay, but he initially mistook it for a scam. The email said that Marriott's agreement with Sonder had ended, and that "we are unable to continue your reservation beyond today."
I don't know how to read this in any other way besides that Marriott contacted these people and told them that they no longer had reservations.
I also don't know how to read this in any other way besides that Marriott's cancellation of the contract with Sonder was directly responsible for this, which must either mean that the stay was at a Marriott hotel contracted through Sonder, or that it was at a third-party hotel and Marriott decided to not pay Sonder for the rest of that per
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So exercised the only power I have as a consumer.
How about getting a refund from your credit card company? Wasn't that possible?
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It usually is possible to issue a chargeback. It might take some work on the customer's part, but it will get a lot more attention from the vendor than a customer who ghosts them.
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99% of consumers don't care, especially when there's a 3rd party to be blamed. Now that it doesn't look good for Marriott what are you going to do? This is the Coca-Cola corporation vs Pepsi Co problem. You can choose not to drink coke and Pepsi, but if you want to cut of ties with both the mega companies in this field you're going to start having problems, it's not like you can drink Sprite, or Mountain Dew, or even water in some cases.
Those people who booked through Marriott into Sonder properties were co
Re:That's a bad look on Marriott. (Score:4, Interesting)
In a situation like this where the occupants aren't at fault, you honour the reservation for the duration of the stay, and you comp the rest of the stay ("It's on the house.")
This may not even remotely be possible. Firstly Sonder collapsed on its own. The Marriott deal collapsing was just the final nail in the coffin. Ultimately it was Sonder who was bankrupt and Sonder who couldn't handle paying the properties. Marriott didn't kick out anyone.
Marriott provided little more than the booking platform that was only partially used by Sonder, and some point sharing for Sonder customers, and while Marriott has said they were making arrangements for people who booked Sonder properties directly through Marriott's website, they claim have no insight into other bookings through Sonder or 3rd party agents. It seems most of the people complaining were those.
In this way you generate a ton of good-will for the Marriott, and positive word of mouth advertising that you only wish you could buy on demand.
Marriott doesn't need either. They are no longer a hotel. They are a mega global chain. You've likely stayed at Marriott hotels without even knowing. I know I certainly have had situations where I didn't realise a property was Marriott owned until I saw the Marriott logo on a card at the check-in desk. At this point, with their size, word of mouth advertising means nothing to them.
Was Sonder not paying when they got the $ (Score:3)
Because this only makes sense if Sonder was consistently not paying Marriott for bookings.
In any case, Marriott should have guaranteed the price - offering to let you continue if you gave a credit card directly to them.
Re: Was Sonder not paying when they got the $ (Score:2)
Re: Was Sonder not paying when they got the $ (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that was also some offering in the mail which the user thought it was spam. So the user himself is mainly to blame for having been evicted from the room. If you get a mail like that while you are there you should just take it up with the frontdesk to check if it was spam or not.
Maybe someone from the hotel could have, like, spoken to them in person. What if people don't check their email on vacation? Would that be on them too?
Re: Was Sonder not paying when they got the $ (Score:2)
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Old school - a note under the door, at least when they make the bed and provide fresh towels.
But everything is done by algorithms these days. If someone in head office makes a decision to terminate a contract then possibly all the bookings are just reset on the computer without any knowledge from the employees on site.
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Sonder doesn't really have staff as such. The locations have maybe one cleaner, who doesn't enter your rental during your stay, and MAYBE one person in the lobby, if your location even has a lobby.
Your rental is an apartment, and like any apartment, you're responsible for cleaning your room and doing your own dishes while you're there. That's not to say that the lobby person couldn't stick a note under a door, but I understand that minimal staffing is one of the reasons Sonder rentals are so affordable.
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Not everybody is going to notice a note slipped under the door or bother to look at it. Much better would be hanging the notes from the room's doorknob, similar to the Do Not Disturb signs. If you make them the right size, they cover up the place where you use your keycard to unlock the door so that you can't even get into your room without at least looking at the notice and there's no plausible way to claim th
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Maybe someone from the hotel could have, like, spoken to them in person.
The whole point of Sonder's system was that there are no people. When you start and end with talking to a computer it can be very damn hard to communicate to real people. God knows there's a world of people who ignore phone calls these days. There's not even someone to talk to to check in.
We have the sole story of one disgruntled person. I wouldn't be so quick to make any assumptions.
Also what do you mean "Hotel"? Hotel is the antithesis of Sonder and Air-bnb. Those whole platforms are built around not bein
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Also what do you mean "Hotel"? Hotel is the antithesis of Sonder and Air-bnb. Those whole platforms are built around not being a hotel and not having the comforts of a hotel. Your use of that word makes me fundamentally think you don't know what is going on here.
From the article "The company describes itself as a global operator of "premium, design-forward apartments and intimate boutique hotels serving the modern traveler". Not to mention Marriot is most definitely a hotel chain and I feel no need to play semantic games to pretend they are not.
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Ceasing operations would imply anyone who was working for the company who could do such visits was immediately fired at the same time.
I was referring to someone working for the company that kicked them out. People still seem to "work" there.
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Because this only makes sense if Sonder was consistently not paying Marriott for bookings.
Yes. Literally Marriott gave up on the company due to them being in a default position on what they owed Marriott.
In any case, Marriott should have guaranteed the price - offering to let you continue if you gave a credit card directly to them.
That makes no sense for the consumer. They will be double charged. The problem is Sonder (the people who had the money from the customer) is bankrupt. But in any case Marriott did cover all consumers who booked via Marriott's systems, the problem is they have little insight beyond that.
Unprofessional (Score:2)
Sonder, ... abruptly went out of business ... leaving guests scrambling as they were told to vacate their rooms immediately.
Sonder on Monday said it would wind down operations immediately ...
Immediately kicking people out of their in-progress reservations doesn't seem like winding down. No mentions of compensation for any inconvenience Sonder imposed on their now-former guests either.
I'm genuinely bummed by this (Score:3)
I've had a bunch of great stays in Sonder apartments. They're beautifully decorated and extremely affordable. I use them as locations for photo shoots as much as anything else, but getting a 3 bedroom apartment that's a block off Canal Street in New Orleans for $120/night, or a $900/week 2 bedroom apartment rental that's literally next door to the Brooklyn Bridge/City hall subway hub is about as nice as I could ever hope to find.
I've been at the point where Sonder has been my first choice for accommodations about the last three years. I'm actually impacted by this news since I had reservations to stay at Sonder locations in December and again in February.
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I found Sonder because I was desperate to book a weeklong stay in Manhattan that didn't cost $2k and wasn't in some bedbug infested nightmare in Times Square. I was essentially checking every short term rental on Google Maps when I ran across it.
Once I got in their system, I found rentals everyplace I wanted to go. Getting a very cheap flight and a Sonder apartment has been my recipe for an interesting long weekend every few months ever since.
Web site is still up (Score:3)
The Sonder site is still up and appears to be functional. I never got to see if there were still listings as having to unblock the 20+ scripts and who knows how much other cruft wasn't worth my time.
One would think taking down the site or at least putting up a message would be one of the first things to do when you're going out of business. But then, when your web site has that much cruftiness, maybe they couldn't figure out how to change anything.
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Or the people who made the web site were contractors and there's no one doing maintenance.
I have active (future) reservations and I still haven't gotten any direct notification that there's any operational status from the company yet, even though I've been seeing news about this for the last three days.
I would never AirBNB and don't understand why (Score:2)
It's creepy, they have cameras everywhere. And for the person who has the property, you're letting strangers in.
Just a weird and unattractive concept.
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That's where Sonder was different. It wasn't individuals renting things out. Sonder owned properties that were closer to full apartment buildings and rented out the units much more similarly to as if it were just a hotel.
I stayed in one in San Diego a few years back, not even knowing it was some sort of "AirBNB competitor", I was just "booking a hotel" and it looked neat and price was decent. In the end, the room was great, right in the part of town I wanted to be in, and had plenty of room and a full kitch