Booted from Boots and Hearts: Hotel cancels festival goer’s reservation

Watch the video above: Family feels ripped off after hotel jacks up rates. Carey Marsden reports.

TORONTO – Angela D’Andrea just wanted to spend the weekend enjoying country tunes at the Boots and Hearts festival.

She booked a room for the August 1 weekend at the Bowmanville Holiday Inn last year in September. But in November, she was told her reservation was cancelled.

D’Andrea had made the booking months ahead of this year’s Boots and Hearts festival running from July 30 to August 3 this year.

She said she was told she could book the room again but it would have to be done through the country music festand at three times the price.

“Unfortunately Boots and Hearts had taken over the hotel for that entire weekend so they had to cancel my reservation,” D’Andrea told Global News.

“Here is the Holiday Inn that I could have had for $397, now $1,200 for the weekend.”

The massive price bump came as a surprise.

“I didn’t think there would be a huge discrepancy in price, just based on the 2013 rates,” she said.

Republic Live, the organizers of Boots and Hearts, issued a statement putting the blame on the hotel.

“We have had a block of rooms allocated for the festival for our production staff and for CID’s use since August 2013. Should anything have been booked following this, it would have been an error on the part of the Holiday Inn and would have been in violation of our contract,” the statement read.

Representatives for the Bowmanville Holiday Inn refused to be interviewed, but issued a statement calling the incident a “front desk error.”

“The booking agent had no authority to book those rooms,” the representative said.

The experience left D’Andrea feeling “ripped off.”

“This is such a disheartening experience,” D’Andrea told Global News. “I can’t say enough how disappointed I am with the way things turned out,” she said.

With files from Carey Marsden.