The Room Is Booked, Until the Hotel Says It Isn’t | nytimes.com

When is a confirmed hotel reservation not confirmed? When the hotel has sold your room to someone else, as Linda and Michael Morgan learned over the Thanksgiving holiday. The hotel, in this case, was the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, and according to Mrs. Morgan and some other would-be guests who were turned away over Thanksgiving, the “someone else” was a contingent of Saudi princes and officials who accompanied King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.