Mostly for mentors I guess, but I wanted to check and see if anyone else was having issues with their hotels?
We have been fortunate to go to worlds for the past 3 years, this will be our fourth. We have never had issues getting/keeping a hotel reservation until “GET Sports” got involved. I guess VEX/RECF hired this group to “manage” the hospitality? I can see some benefits to doing this, but so far today it’s been a disaster for us.
On Feb 19th, after our State tournaments, we called the same hotel we have used for the past 2 years for Worlds and told them we would be coming up for Worlds and needed 8 rooms for our 4 teams (1xIQ 3xVRC). 4x with double beds (bigger families) and 4x with king/pull out couch. No problem, we reserved the rooms and got email confirmations/numbers from Marriott and tied to my rewards number. We subsequently scheduled airline flights, as well as some teams driving up, so we would have the right amount of cars to go to/from (which we have done many times) the event and the hotel for the group that we had.
We get a call today from “GET Sports” saying there was a problem with our reservation (I’ve never used them, I saw emails from them to help us out with planning if necessary, but never needed any help so just ignored them). They are basically saying that we don’t have a firm reservation since we didn’t do it through them. Did VEX/RECF ever say we HAD to use them? Marriott believes we have a reservation, although they can’t give us the room types we needed because the “room list” has to come from GET Sports, so that really messed us up. And, GET Sports is saying that they need payment today (they will give us until tomorrow) for a reservation. We expected to pay upon checkout like every other year at Worlds, I don’t have $5k in my pocket to magically send them.
In short, we reserved hotel rooms in the exact same hotel as the past two years, did it 2 months ahead of time, reserved the type of rooms we needed, understood our payment terms, and organized our flights/drive around this. Now that GET Sports is involved, we hear today that we may not have a reservation, we will not get the room types we reserved, and payment is due immediately.
Somehow I think this all revolves around someone’s commission.
We didn’t go through VEX/Get Sports. We always use trip adviser or trivago for both U.S Open and Worlds. We have went three years, but one year was in CA and last year we found a hotel that was trash, but had great (fake) ratings. So we are trying somewhere new this year.
We never intentionally became part of their block at all. I simply called the hotel, said we had stayed there the past two years for World’s, and would like to stay there again. Somehow GET Sports glommed onto this. we never communicated with GET Sports at all.
Huh, so I wonder if the secret key is to not mention worlds at all? I can’t imagine that random people who book hotels that week and aren’t going to worlds would end up under GET Sports, but then again who knows.
Anyways, though that’s besides the point. There shouldn’t be a problem in the first place. Hopefully VEX is reading this and does something useful. Also, hope you are able to get it worked out and that not too many other people have problems.
I keep getting calls from Get Sports asking for details on our trip to worlds. What hotel are you at? What airline? I have ignored the calls so far assuming they want to get a cut of the commission or something . I didn’t use them and don’t plan to. They have NOT made the securing of a hotel easier and if they are messing up rooms for registered teams, then there is a bigger problem here.
The ironic thing is that we were with an REC official yesterday for a presentation at a local University and he asked us to give him our impressions of the changes to World’s this year after we get back. Since we have been before and they are changing IQ days and such… I now know the first thing on my list.
I tried booking through Marriott for my personal room and using my SO’s Marriott discount and they were not accepting outside reservations. Our team, as far as I know used the get sports website.
We are sending 1 VRC team, and 5 IQ teams to Worlds. We used the “GET Sports” site to book our hotel rooms. It seemed to work out ok, and they have helped us make changes and additions. Our robotics program reserved the rooms and then transferred them to parents once we figured out who would stay in what room. I don’t think anyone was thrilled with having to pay in full the non-refundable hotel bill an entire month before the event.
Their was a partially refundable deposit required to hold a hotel reservation. This might be a nice idea, only for the fact that only people who were serious about using a room would be reserving a room. I bet that in previous years their were hotels that were completely booked, that is until more than a few of those reservations were canceled close to the last minute. I think this year it was easier to get a reservation at a “good” hotel later in the season than it was last year.
We stay at the Marriott Courtyard Louisville East. It’s not fancy, but is nice enough @ $117 a night. It’s close to food. The drive to the event is 10-15 mins.
Some of our team members wanted to use AirBNB, which I probably should have. But, we wanted to have everyone in the same place for travel and talks.
It’s just incredibly frustrating to get a call the day fees are due from someone you never talked to telling you the mess they have made and wanting full payment after the past 3 years went so easily.
oh man yes… this is an ongoing saga today. Get Sports is what changed it. Marriott and Get Sports, the right hand can’t figure out what the left hand is doing. Marriott says I have confirmation numbers that will be honored, Get Sports says that they don’t think they will and called to tell me I had to work through them and payment would be due in full.
I was on the phone for 2:15 yesterday for this.
And I’m not the only one. Another team that we suggested use this hotel had the same alarming phone call yesterday. It’s a mess.
The problem is that the team absolutely needs a place to stay when they arrive. You don’t want to be surprised at the last minute with 8 to 12 families needing a place, and you don’t want to split up the team. I understand the frustration.
I’m just operating under the word of Marriott that they will honor their confirmation emails.
It’s peculiar that a agency (Get Sports) that a customer would usually contract to make your reservations for you, would interpose themselves on a transaction that is already complete.
IMO it boarders on fraud and is highly corrupt. How can a travel agency change an existing reservation you previously made directly with a hotel? Hope all works out with your teams.
If I show up and they don’t honor my reservations, I will be sleeping in the lobby of the hotel. Trust me they don’t want that!!!