You could have had a fan, but...

I spent most of Friday evening at the airport in Indianapolis. American Airlines was doing that thing where they can't decide if they want to cancel a flight or not. So instead, every 20 minutes, they just delayed the flight by another 20 or 30 minutes. (See the snapshot from my phone? That's all the flight alerts my travel tracking app sent me last night.) Eventually, as I rather suspected would happen, the flight was canceled, so I went to reclaim my bag and make my way to a hotel for the night.

As I was collecting my things and figuring out next steps, I pulled up Hotels.com and found a hotel downtown that I'm familiar with, one I like, and it happened to be the cheapest option downtown this evening. So I call them on the phone, instead of booking via Hotels.com, because my hands are full and I'm walking, trying to get out of the airport. The hotel clerk, after bumbling through the process and putting me on hold multiple times, quotes me a price higher than Hotels.com ($169 versus $149). I ask her if she can match the Hotels.com price, meaning, can they come down by $20? She says nope, sorry, can't do that.

I asked to confirm: So you're telling me, that I have to go book online instead to save that $20, and then your hotel has to pay the booking website 20% of the booking amount? You can't just give me the same rate directly, saving me the time and saving you the booking fee? Nope, can't be done, she says. "Um, that's like, some third party thing, we can't match what they do." (Buh?)

OK, thanks, no point in bothering then. I'll go online.

By now, I'm already kind of miffed that the hotel wouldn't help me out. Last time I was stranded due to a flight cancellation, another hotel downtown had no problem matching that rate. It's a shame that hotel wasn't available this time around. I then decided that I don't really care where I stay for the night, I just want it to be as cheap as possible and somewhere downtown, so I can make my way to the Amtrak station early in the morning.

So while riding back downtown in the back of a taxi, I fire up the laptop, plug in the Sprint modem, and pull up Hotwire.com. Hotwire had a four star hotel in downtown Indy for only $113 tonight.

So I booked it. On the Hotwire website, they don't tell you the name or exact location of the hotel until you make the booking. And when I pushed the "buy it" button I found out that I had ended up with the exact same hotel that I had talked to on the phone. I got it for a full $56 less than what I was quoted on the phone, and they still had to pay the website for the booking. Yet, I was ready and willing to pay them $36 more directly.

I'm left frustrated by all of this. This hotel could have turned me into a fan by doing me a favor on a really stressful travel day. Instead, they turned me away, and then it dawned on me that if they're not going to be loyal to me, maybe I shouldn't bother being loyal to them.

Oh, and I was booked to stay at this hotel for a week next month. Now I'm starting to think I should cancel that and just use Hotwire instead. Treat me like a commodity, and I can do the same to you.

(Oh, and after getting to the hotel and checking in? I wanted to meet a friend for drinks, but I decided not to spend another dime in the hotel that didn't seem to care about me. So, we went down the street a block to the other hotel, the one that treated me better, but didn't have any rooms this time around. It felt good spending my money in their lobby bar, instead of at the first place. I'm a fan.)

Best Lobby Bar in Downtown Indianapolis?

I travel to downtown Indianapolis a lot for work, so I've come to know just about all of the bars, hotels and restaurants in downtown Indianapolis. I thought it might be fun to write up some of the things I like and share them here.

Of late, I've been thinking about the concept of the lobby bar. You know, the bar that a hotel typically has, typically on its first floor, often times opening out onto the lobby. Indy's got a lot of hotels downtown and by extension, a lot of lobby bars. I've been to just about all of them, at least once. And it turns out that my favorite is at the Canterbury Hotel, a tiny little hotel on South Illinois in-between Maryland and Georgia Streets.

The hotel is a bit older, built in 1928. It's a bit small, something of a private club feel to it, and it occasionally feels a bit worn around the edges. I like it, though, as the people that work there are nice, and it's typically convenient to what I'm doing when I'm in downtown Indianapolis. There is an door that takes you directly into the Circle Center mall, which comes in handy for walking to work if the weather isn't so nice out. (FYI, the hotel was recently purchased by a new owner, who promises to renovate.)

The real gem, though, is the bar. Just off to the left from the front entrance, it is a small, quiet, wood-paneled kind of place, where I love to go sit with a book at the end of the night. Dani, the bartender, is quick to recognize regulars, and very friendly and funny. There have been other times where I've stayed at some other hotel, and managed to make a point of stopping in to have a drink, just because I like the room, and the bartender. And it's the kind of thing that makes me more likely to stay there next time I visit.