Chandigarh's JW Marriott hotel directed to refund Rs 1-lakh booking amount

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 13

While directing the authorities to refund the booking amount of Rs1 lakh, the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, UT of Chandigarh, has asked JW Marriott hotel in Sector 35 here to pay a compensation of Rs15,000 for causing inconvenience and harassment to a resident of Mohali.

The commission has also directed the hotel to pay Rs7,000 to the complainant as litigation costs.

Vijay Kumar Kalra, a resident of Mohali, in a complaint filed through counsel Gaurav Bhardwaj, said he approached the hotel for arranging a wedding reception on October 9, 2019, and paid Rs1,00,000 vide receipt dated March 21, 2019, as advance.

He said later he received an email from the hotel informing that the event had been cancelled and the money forfeited. Kalra said he had not given any such instructions for the cancellation and requested for refund of the amount vide an email dated June 14, 2019, as still 117 days were left for the function. However, the hotel declined his request vide an email dated June 15, 2019. Alleging that the acts amount to deficiency in service and unfair trade practice on the part of the hotel, he filed the complaint.

The hotel management denied the allegations and claimed that the booking was cancelled on a request of the complainant’s wife. The amount of Rs1,00,000 was forfeited by the hotel strictly in accordance with the terms and conditions of the catering agreement.

After hearing the arguments, the commission, comprising Rajan Dewan, president, and Suresh Kumar Sardana, a member, said the complainant had paid Rs1,00,000 to the hotel out of his hard-earned money and they couldn’t be allowed to gulp it without providing any services to him which was totally unethical. The hotel wants itself to be in a win-win situation anyways, even at the expense of the complainant and such like gullible consumers and its approach simply is “Heads I win, tails you lose”, which has to be deprecated.

The commission said no doubt the hotel had alleged business loss caused to it due to alleged cancellation of the event, but in such a scenario it was incumbent upon it, being the custodian of the record, to have produced some credible evidence pertaining to the bookings of the relevant period to show that the space booked by the complainant remained vacant. However, nothing of the sort has been placed on record by the hotel.

On the contrary, the complainant has specifically mentioned that the hotel had allotted the date and time to some other customer and a birthday party was organised on October 9, 2019, and, therefore, the hotel had not suffered any loss. In such circumstances, we are of the view that instead of raising ifs and buts, the hotel should have refunded the entire amount, but it failed to do so.