Sadly, many (if not most) hotels will oversell their capacity. I'm now a Marriott Platinum member and one of the benefits of being Platinum is that they are bou

Sadly, many (if not most) hotels will oversell their capacity. I'm now a Marriott Platinum member and one of the benefits of being Platinum is that they are bound to pay a premium to me if they oversell my room. IIRC it's 200%, meaning they don't charge me, buy me a comparable nearby room AND give me a credit for the original reservation price. I would sometimes need to arrive to check-in really late, like 3 a.m. If the hotel was nearly full I'd actually get a call on my mobile phone from the desk manager around 10p or 11p asking if I was still going to be checking in. I'm sure it was only because the hotel would get dinged by corporate for having to pay me out if they gave away my room. Too bad they don't care enough to do that for everyone before selling out their room from under them. An alternate strategy I use with other chains when I'm concerned there might be an oversold situation is to call the hotel around the normal check-in time (~3p) and get the front desk to check-in my room while I'm on the phone and insist on getting the actual room number. That way, it'll be some other poor schmuck who trying to check in at midnight that will get shafted.