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Guests ejected mid-stay from bankrupt hotel chain Sonder
- CSMastermind 1y agoWhy wouldn't they just let people finish out their stay? Sending an email to people saying you need to leave by noon seems crazy.
- jahnu 1y agoLegal requirements to provide food, services, security that suppliers will no longer provide. Not to mention staff.
- Waterluvian 1y agoAlso insurance, maybe?
- fukka42 1y ago[flagged]
- nradov 1y agoIn most cases hotel guests aren't prepaid. There will usually be a credit card hold but the guest hasn't actually paid yet. Innkeepers generally have the legal right to refuse service for (almost) any reason and simply not charge the guest for any additional nights.
- colonwqbang 1y agoThe company is bankrupt. It means they can't/won't/didn't honour their promises.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> What about their legal requirement to deliver what was paid for? The guests don't have a contract with the hotel operator. Only with Sonder. The guests should have claims on Sonder. But it's bankrupt, so YMMV.
- pessimizer 1y agoThe "hotel" they booked with has ceased to exist. They're just creditors now.
- Ninjak8051 1y agoLet's say you own and operate a small independent hotel, some techies from San Francisco offer to perma-book every room for the next three years solid for some fraction of your normal room rate. You keep operating your hotel, the techies send you regular guests (and handle all payments), and at the end of the month you get the same guaranteed income whether business was bad or good. All goes well for a while but the techies start slipping on payments. First it's a few days, but sometimes they miss by a few weeks, so you schedule a call with the VP to straighten things out. Eventually they get a few months behind, you're fed up and demand immediate payment or you will stop lodging their guests (who have paid the techies, but somehow the money has not made it to you). CEO calls to straighten things out, promises to wire the money by Friday, just please please please don't evict any guests. You agree, but Friday comes and goes with crickets, and on Saturday morning you kick everyone out.
- fukka42 1y ago[flagged]
- wbl 1y agoWhat reputation? These people don't know you.
- fukka42 1y agoEveryone knows Marriott.
- Ninjak8051 1y agoThe techies are insolvent but not yet bankrupt. They have been running their business off accounts receivable (which rightfully belong to you) for months. There is no way to work things out, the money isn't there. You have been hosting their guests and you will get back pennies on the dollars you are owed, years later. Time to pull the plug.
- michaelt 1y agoIf you've had Silicon Valley techies book all your rooms for several years, and it's their logo on the side of the building, and all your customers have booked with them? You don't have a reputation.
- roncesvalles 1y agoIt has happened multiple times that when an airline goes bankrupt, passengers at a layover become stranded at the layover. Some businesses go out of business very abruptly.
- moralestapia 1y agoThere has to be laws protecting guests against this. I would be extremely surprised if hotels can just do this with no consequences, even if you somehow signed into it on their T&C. Edit: Downvotes on this? Really? Hail corporate!
- ozim 1y agoHow would it work if hotels are bankrupt? what consequences can you put on a bankrupt company? I guess that guests might have claims for not used part of the stay but that’s going to be handled by bankruptcy process and there are rules who get money back in which order I guess employees get their paychecks first or something.
- dwattttt 1y agoA solution would be to require hotels to carry insurance for this event.
- ianferrel 1y agoWhat if the company that is about to go bankrupt fails to pay its insurance premiums? Seems fairly likely to happen. About-to-be-bankrupt companies generally get behind on all their bills.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> What if the company that is about to go bankrupt fails to pay its insurance premiums? Same as what happens when a homeowner fails to pay their home insurance.
- moralestapia 1y agoWrong. Don't worry, I happen to be knowledgeable about this. Some key differences that come to mind (obviously YMMV): Home insurance stops almost as soon as you stop paying vs. corporate insurance which is usually a bit more lenient and even has things like "tail coverage" in place. The regulatory protections that apply to home insurance are very different to the ones applying to corporate insurance. It's not uncommon for corporate insurance to cover events that happened while the company was insured, even if by the time the claim is filed the policy has been canceled. Insurance is considered an asset of a company, and a judge can rule over what happens to them. This come into play particularly when bankruptcy is involved. Many commercial insurance contracts, under some situations, cannot be canceled by the insurer, even if the company stops paying their premiums. Anyway, I know on a naive approach it's easy to think that "all insurance is the same", but once you scratch a bit more than the surface of it you'll see it's a very complex affair!
- 650 1y agoTheir CEO, Francis Davidson, Forbes 30 under 30. Strikes again. Unicorn status (1 billion) in 2020, to bankrupt in 2025. Another Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonder_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonder_(company) https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisdavidson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisdavidson/
- parpfish 1y agowas this a case where a 1bil valuation in 2020 was increased because of covid (people wanted hotels that didn't require any human interaction) OR they were valued at 1bil pre-covid and covid killed their momentum when travel stopped?
- projektfu 1y agoThey IPO'd in 2021 and were worth about 22 billion until Jan 2022. Then a precipitous fall to about 2.2 billion in 2023, 220 million in 2024, and now 22 million.
- gruez 1y ago>They IPO'd in 2021 and were worth about 22 billion until Jan 2022 No, they IPOed via a merger with SPAC in January 2022, and almost immediately the price of the company took a dip. 2021 was probably when the SPAC was founded/IPOed, and the relatively flat price prior to 2022 was because it was basically a pot of money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonder_(company)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonder_(company)#History
- projektfu 1y agoAh, makes sense. But then the nearly geometric decline began.
- ryandrake 1y ago> Forbes 30 under 30 Really amazing how much of a reliable indicator this has become.
- balamatom 1y agoNow you're experiencing https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/sonder https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/sonder!
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoCool link! Reminds me of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Ye8fBEkcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Ye8fBEkcc
- ryandv 1y agoNice track.
- balamatom 1y agoOoh, Sisters! Love their later "we're not Goths, we're Modernists (audience's none the wiser)" things, too. Total crypto-McLuhan. Mate hopped the fences at some festival couple decades back to meet Andrew, shook his hand.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI always enjoyed watching people try to "interview" Eldritch. I suspect the person assigned drew the short straw. He was not kind to interviewers. Kind of like a pale, beshaded Charles Grodin.
- ryandv 1y ago> founded in Montreal, Canada Shameful. Given the choice between integrity and money, it seems they chose money.
- gip 1y agoI was staying in a apartment in London a long time ago and a Sunday(!) bailiffs came and kicked everyone in the building out in 3 hours. The reason was that the rent hadn't been paid to the building owner by the management company. Most people just left and lost the rent they had paid. These things happen and there are no protection for tenants unfortunately.
- SoftTalker 1y agoAnd there was no prior warning? That seems unreasonable but maybe it happened that way.
- vkou 1y agoThis is unreasonable. In any just society, the bailiffs would be slapping cuffs on the owners of the management company, while the tenants would get notice. You can't throw someone out of their home without notice because you have a business dispute with some third party.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gruez 1y ago>In any just society, the bailiffs would be slapping cuffs on the owners of the management company, while the tenants would get notice. ...for leasing to a hotel chain that later went bankrupt? >You can't throw someone out of their home without notice because you have a business dispute with some third party. It's a hotel. Hotels typically have less tenant rights than long-term accommodations.
- vkou 1y ago> ...for leasing to a hotel chain that later went bankrupt? No, the story in the great-grandparent's post is not about a hotel, it's about a residential lease where: 1. They were paying rent to a property management company who managed a building's apartments. 2. The property management company stopped paying rent to the building owner. 3. The building owner had the police throw out every person living in those apartments with 0 day notice. The person at fault is #2 - the property management company. That is who the building owner's dispute is with. It is criminal that the people who were thrown out onto the street with zero notice were the tenants who have up to this point upheld their end of the agreement. The bar for getting thrown out of your home should be far higher than the bar for getting thrown out of your hotel room.
- robofanatic 1y agoapparently guests were literally fired that day.
- krisoft 1y agoSonder is the noun for the realization that each random person you see has a life as vivid and complex as your own. I guess the company lived up to its name by reminding every guest that the company itself has(had?) a “life” as complex and eventfull as the guest’s own.
- Animats 1y agoThe specific Sonder hotel mentioned in the article is still listed on the Mariott web site.[1] "A stay you can count on. Experience travel without the guesswork. While every space is unique, you can always count on the Sonder Standard. All stays feature designer details, keyless entry, fast free WiFi and our 24/7 digital concierge." Trying to make a reservation returns "Your session timed out, but you can start a new hotel search below." This badly hurts Mariott's brand. Their page reads as if they stand behind Sonder. Marriott supposedly has about 30 brands, and now you have to ask which of them are fake fronts. [1] https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/nycho-the-merchant-hotel-sonder/overview/ https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/nycho-the-merchant-hot...
- lotsofpulp 1y agoIncredible, given the hurdles Marriott asks franchisors to jump through.
- vkou 1y agoA good franchise will bring in X million in profits and a bad one will bring in XYZ million in reputational damage. A good unicorn will bring in XYZ billion[1] in profits and a bad one will bring in XYZ million in reputational damage. Which is exactly why franchise operators get put through the wringer, while 'pod hotel but with an app' startups get the red carpet treatment. --- [1] Yes, I know that is bullshit, but I'm not an exec, I don't get paid to be wildly optimistic.
- MattGaiser 1y agoI get a big red popup saying that Sonder is no longer affiliated with Marriott?
- Animats 1y agoNot getting that here, but some images are returning 404 errors. Somewhere, someone is probably trying to scrub the Mariott site manually.
- jen729w 1y agoTerrible look for Marriott. We've been considering joining either Bonvoy or HHonors and discussing the merits of either chain. Mostly just for something to talk about, as we're too poor to stay at either for significant amounts of time, but nevertheless. Marriott took the route of spreading out their brands. Sheraton, oh that's Marriott? I see. Westin? Huh. Le Méridien, never heard of … oh, Marriott. Whereas Hilton seem proud enough to stick their name in a thing, even if it's a trailing '…by Hilton'. I wonder how this affects, say, bringing in a new brand. 'Sonder': anonymous. Never heard of it, until now. Gives Marriott some distance. Goes to hell? Cut it. How hard do you really need to try to onboard that brand? 'Sonder by Hilton': I know who owns that. I know which brand to blame when it goes to crap. Directly affects the core offering. I just made up my mind whose scheme I'm joining.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoHotel standards have gone way down since covid. Hilton or Marriott don’t mean as much, and recent reviews from a source you trust are about as good as it gets for predicting quality.
- jen729w 1y ago‘A source you trust’ no longer including any of the major booking sites, alas. You know what we do now? We get the Lonely Planet.
- mandevil 1y agoMy experience with LP is that they went way down in quality after Red Ventures (who own CNET, Bankrate.com etc.) bought them in 2020. I stopped trusting them completely after the CNET AI scandal- wikipedia no longer considers CNET to be a reliable source, and I'm not sure why I should trust LP either. It turns out that living in a high trust environment is a lot better than living in a low trust environment, but if we're going to be living in a low trust environment, better to understand it than to pretend we can still act like it's still high trust.
- HeinzStuckeIt 1y ago
- patall 1y agoFun fact: Swedish 'sönder' (with umlaut) means 'broken'
- razingeden 1y agothis is why i read this site
- syncsynchalt 1y agoWe have the same word in English, as "sunder" (sundered).
- sudobash1 1y agoPerhaps more commonly known in the forms "asunder" (as in "torn asunder") and "sundry" (meaning "various").
- pirates 1y agoWait for 2 sunders before DPS
- deffyweffy 1y agoWe also have the same word in English, as "sonder". > noun, the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sonder https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sonder
- pjdesno 1y agoBankruptcy can be a bitch. I remember a case (maybe 30 years ago?) where a local health club chain went bankrupt, and anything anyone had left in their lockers was stuck there until the judge ruled on the case.
- pjdesno 1y agoHere's the case - a judge froze the company's assets, which meant that if you had any of your personal property on the premises, you were SOL. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/03/28/Court-freezes-assets-of-Joy-of-Movement-fitness-clubs/5249670136400/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/03/28/Court-freezes-assets...
- gruez 1y ago> Superior Court Judge Barbara Rouse entered a temporary restraining order, forbidding Estridge and his eight Joy of Movement corporations from selling any assets or real estate. On Thursday, Judge Elbert Tuttle also placed liens on real estate and bank accounts belonging to Estridge and his companies. But your stuff in the gym's locker aren't the gym's "assets"? Same if you parked your car in some bankrupt hotel's parking lot. Just because it's on some bankrupt company's property, doesn't mean your car is up for grabs by creditors. The only trouble is that the building probably does count as the gym's assets, so even though your stuff isn't technically frozen, you can't really go in to get your stuff. But if for whatever reason you could (eg. breaking in?), you'd be in the clear to grab your stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> your stuff in the gym's locker aren't the gym's "assets"? A key component of bankrutcy is figuring out what belongs to whom. You say the stuff in your locker is yours. A credit may claim the company stored its idk staplers in a neighbouring locker. Usually, the gym would moderate that dispute. But given they're bankrupt, what you want to avoid is the creditor hiring a dude to empty out the locker of staplers into their storage locker opening your locker and doing that to it.
- bilbo0s 1y ago>She said there was a sharp decline in revenue "arising from Sonder's participation in Marriott's Bonvoy reservation system". This will be an interesting case study to piece together. What were the factors that lead revenue to go down on expansion of your marketing and access reach? I have my own suspicions, but the backstory with this is probably way crazier than I'm even thinking. Like, "Why would anyone ever sign that?" level crazy.
- BryantD 1y agoI've been guessing that the problems existed prior to the Marriot deal; why would they give up their front door to a competitor otherwise? But I agree that it's got to be a wildly crazy story.
- icegreentea2 1y agoSonder has been bleeding cash ever since it went public (via SPAC). https://companiesmarketcap.com/cad/sonder/cash-on-hand/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/cad/sonder/cash-on-hand/ It's agreement with Marriot was "completed" in August 2024. It was absolutely a hail mary. While they might describe it as a integration failure, I think what they were actually hoping for was: a) integration into Marriot's reservation system would reduce operating costs. From my user perspective, it looked like the Sonder system got completely replaced (like I had to make a new account and upload new ID...). b) "Somehow" the Marriot integration would lead to increased bookings. Both their 2025 and 2024 annual filings indicate that they were well aware of where things were going. Honestly, the filings don't really paint an optimistic picture of their ability to succeed, even with the Marriot deal.
- acrooks 1y agoI’ve stayed >150 nights at Marriott hotels this year and was pleasantly surprised when Sonder started popping up as an option. But the thing I noticed is that, at least in the markets I visited, it was often MORE expensive than the local 4/5 star hotel. But with the hotel I got the guarantee of breakfast, a good gym, 24 hour reception, upgrades, laundry service, etc. As a result I never booked one. My feeling with Sonder is similar to that of my feeling with Airbnb: it’s fantastic for those longer trips where you want some extra amenities in the room like a kitchen. But, for general business or short-term travel, I just don’t get it. It no longer wins on price, and it loses by an order of magnitude on convenience. Why not just pick a hotel?
- icegreentea2 1y agoWhen I first booked with Sonder back in 2023 in Montreal, they were $20-40 less per night. This year, things were about break even. At least in Montreal, the Sonder offered a very nice location in the city (especially taking into account my office location) where there were very little chain hotels nearby. I saw it as a "more predictable AirBnB". Bummer, I really liked being able to stay in that area.
- m463 1y ago> Sonder's properties often have no staff and rely on door codes for guest entry. I encountered this recently. The reception desk had a large portrait monitor with a person videoconferenced in from a remote location. You talked to the display. She walked you through scanning credit card using a reader installed below the screen and printing out room access code. It was doable, but seemed like a strange dysfunctional future had arrived.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThe business model is you hire a live in “manager”, often times a recent immigrant, in quotes because they don’t manage anything, but they are called that so they don’t qualify for overtime. Then you pay them $50k or so per year, might even be for a married couple, and the kiosk helps them get sleep by avoiding interruptions overnight. But they’re still there in case of fire or police emergency to provide access and keys and whatnot. The person on the kiosk is obviously in India/Colombia/Philippines/etc where labor is cheaper and they can handle multiple hotels at once. Personally, I avoid those types of hotels, but don’t know if it will be as much of a choice in the future. I so like online checkin with Hilton’s app and using my phone as a key, so I rarely see the front desk anyway.
- archagon 1y agoThe penultimate step before just swapping them with some AI simulacrum.
- roryirvine 1y agoWhy the need for the videoconference? Since Covid, many budget hotels (think Premier Inn or Travelodge in the UK), have moved to an unstaffed kiosk model. Tap in your reservation number, confirm your name, take a blank keycard, tap it on the NFC writer, and away you go. The restaurant / bar is still staffed, so they can help with any issues that arise, and there's live chat on their app/website. Does a staffed reception (whether in-person or remote) actually add much value?
- rootusrootus 1y agoI've seen this at a couple banks now. Including my local credit union. One person in the lobby that is really just a helper to point you in the right direction. All the 'tellers' are videoconference machines. Basically an ATM with an ID scanner and videoconference setup. For the moment the teller you talk to is still a real teller with the credit union, just at their main branch, but give it time. They took away the one reason I had for maintaining my credit union membership.
- hysan 1y agoNot surprised. Our one experience using Sonder was horrible. Toilet didn’t work and was constantly flushing water. Took forever to get connected to someone. Then they said that they didn’t have maintenance to send until the next day. Asked to be moved. Next room was much worse (other broken stuff, visibly poor condition) but at least the toilet worked? They didn’t have other rooms to change us to. At that point it had been several hours on the phone, so we said fuck it. We need to eat and sleep after our day of travel. Not get hot potatoed around between clueless customer support. The only other two people I know who tried Sonder had similarly shitty experiences that swore them off too.
- ruthven-elara 11mo ago[dead]