[dquigley]

While frequently with these articles you have to wonder about the validity of all parts of the story, I can say I've had A similar experience from a consumer perspective. I was trying to book hotels for my wedding and couldn't find a hotel that I knew was in the town my in-laws lived in.

I looked up the hotel on the corporate website and it showed it as completely booked, and this particular had didn't show up in any searches for rooms because of that.

I ended up calling them and found out they had left the chain and were becoming independent and had plenty of rooms. So I can't confirm this small business' story, I Can confirm that similar things happen.

[bloaf]

I'm not familiar with how hotels inform 3rd party websites about room reservations. Could it just be that smaller independent hotels simply don't have the technical chops to correctly set up or manage such notifications?