Dalata, the parent company of Maldron Hotels Group, which is the biggest hotel proprietor in Ireland, has rejected allegations that they intentionally cancelled room reservations to resell them at higher rates during the dates when Oasis is slated to perform in Manchester in the approaching summer.
On Wednesday, Maldron Hotels Group attributed the mismanagement of bookings on Monday and Tuesday to a ‘system glitch’, which resulted in a significantly higher number of rooms being reserved than what was available, specifically for the nights that coincide with the Oasis concerts in July in Manchester.
The two affected hotels, Maldron Manchester City and Maldron Cathedral Quarter, have presently suspended taking reservations while they work on fixing the glitch. A representative from Maldron Hotels has confirmed that not all reservations made at these hotels on the aforementioned days can be honoured.
On a positive note, the two Manchester-based Clayton hotels, also run by Dalata, were not impacted by this system error.
In addition, the glitch reportedly made it possible for a few customers to secure rooms later that evening at a higher rate, the group acknowledged in a public statement. However, these reservations can’t be honoured either, according to the spokesperson.
Committing to honouring the reservations for rooms in July 2025 at the two Maldron hotels that were made before August 26th, the hotel operator has affirmed the incident is not a strategy to inflate room prices, but an unintended overbooking due to a fault in their reservation system.
Furthermore, customers may have erroneously been notified about their booking cancellation if they made their reservations prior to Monday. The company is now “actively engaging” with such affected customers.
In response to several social media posts by customers receiving an ‘incomplete booking’ notice after reserving rooms at their hotels, Dalata extends its sincere apologies for the inconvenience, although the root of the problem hasn’t been identified yet. These posts include one by Sacha Lord, a businessman advising the Greater Manchester Combined Authority on nightlife issues, who says he was approached by “multiple people” who had their reservations at the two Manchester-based Maldron hotels terminated and the rooms were then relisted for triple the original price.