Building Me Up . . . and Letting Me Down

I'm leaving for a brief business trip to the Seattle area. I was delighted to receive an e-mail from the hotel welcoming me in advance, and letting me know about the new in-room CD player - bring my own music. Great! I'm excited, and lookng forward to my stay.

But the one thing I'm paranoid about when travelling is getting a non-smoking room. The e-mail also invited me to view my reservation details online, so I happily clicked on the link to make sure my request was noted.

Reservation Error

We apologize for the inconvenience, but the selected reservation cannot be retrieved online. Please contact the Internet Help Desk . . .

AAgh! Instant frustration and the end of my warm glow . . .

I was told that this happened because I didn't make the original booking - that was done by the client's travel agent. Apparently only the person making the booking can view the reservation.

Which makes no sense - I'm the traveller - if you're going to send me an e-mail about my stay, then I should be able to retrieve and possibly change my details.

It's fine to make rules about who can access information - but please make them make sense! Otherwise, you risk losing all the goodwill you've worked so hard to build.