The specific Sonder hotel mentioned in the article is still listed on the Mariott web site.[1]
"A stay you can count on. Experience travel without the guesswork. While every space is unique, you can always count on the Sonder Standard. All stays feature designer details, keyless entry, fast free WiFi and our 24/7 digital concierge."
Trying to make a reservation returns "Your session timed out, but you can start a new hotel search below."
This badly hurts Mariott's brand. Their page reads as if they stand behind Sonder.
Marriott supposedly has about 30 brands, and now you have to ask which of them are fake fronts.
Having been affected by this personally, I don't think Marriott cares about their brand at this point as they have achieved relative monopoly status. There are plenty of other horrible things they've accomplished in the last few years besides this. It makes me want to watch out for CitizenM similarly, because it's increasingly unclear what Marriott's actual role in your stay even is anymore.
The term monopoly means nothing if Marriott is one.
Not only does Marriott not own 95% of hotels with their brands, but in any given area, you can almost certainly find a competing Hilton/IHG/Choice/Hyatt brand.
It’s about as competitive as a market can get. What you probably are not aware of is a location where half or more hotels of the above brands are owned by the same people, and they franchise all the brands and choose all the prices. But even that is relatively rare.
I took a long road trip this summer and felt like I had plenty of options. My cumulative stays ended up:
1) Hilton
2) IHG
3) Choice
4) camping
5) AirBnB
I have stayed at a bunch of hotels in the last six months and come to the conclusion that price, brand, and reviews have no relation at all with quality.
I know of a startup founder (I think YC) who "won" the 30 Under 30 and now goes to great lengths to hide this fact, i.e. it's never mentioned on their LinkedIn or any online profile that they have control over.
Probably can't stop search engines from indexing Forbes.com but still.
To be fair, Person of the Year is a prize that is more "This is a person who impacted the world", not necessarily "This is a good person that deserves praise". Both Stalin (twice!) and Hitler been Person of the Year.
Forbes 30 under 30 seems to be a bit more interesting for narcissists, as it really focuses on their "great achievements".
I'm not 100% sure - there's quite a few YC founders who have been on the Forbes 30 under 30. As we're commenting on one of their sites, I feel obligated to point out how great it is as an accelerator as well!
was this a case where a 1bil valuation in 2020 was increased because of covid (people wanted hotels that didn't require any human interaction) OR they were valued at 1bil pre-covid and covid killed their momentum when travel stopped?
They IPO'd in 2021 and were worth about 22 billion until Jan 2022. Then a precipitous fall to about 2.2 billion in 2023, 220 million in 2024, and now 22 million.
>They IPO'd in 2021 and were worth about 22 billion until Jan 2022
No, they IPOed via a merger with SPAC in January 2022, and almost immediately the price of the company took a dip. 2021 was probably when the SPAC was founded/IPOed, and the relatively flat price prior to 2022 was because it was basically a pot of money.
I was at some Forbes 30 under 30 party a couple years ago - as in, I started noticing a large number of guests were that - and I started offering myself up as a future character witness
We also have the same word in English, as "sonder".
> noun, the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.
I was staying in a apartment in London a long time ago and a Sunday(!) bailiffs came and kicked everyone in the building out in 3 hours. The reason was that the rent hadn't been paid to the building owner by the management company. Most people just left and lost the rent they had paid. These things happen and there are no protection for tenants unfortunately.
That's for long term rentals, and what gp describes was already illegal action against against a normal long term tenant . In the UK a tenancy is a property right not just a contract -it's a right to a specific property, not just a contract with a person. So if the tenancy was executed with the consent of the owner, they can't just kick out the tenants even if the management company didn't pay them . That's because the tenants right to the property isn't just via the chain of contracts between them and the owner. For a hotel room or Airbnb, or a lodger, very different rules apply
This is unreasonable. In any just society, the bailiffs would be slapping cuffs on the owners of the management company, while the tenants would get notice.
You can't throw someone out of their home without notice because you have a business dispute with some third party.
> ...for leasing to a hotel chain that later went bankrupt?
No, the story in the great-grandparent's post is not about a hotel, it's about a residential lease where:
1. They were paying rent to a property management company who managed a building's apartments.
2. The property management company stopped paying rent to the building owner.
3. The building owner had the police throw out every person living in those apartments with 0 day notice.
The person at fault is #2 - the property management company. That is who the building owner's dispute is with. It is criminal that the people who were thrown out onto the street with zero notice were the tenants who have up to this point upheld their end of the agreement.
The bar for getting thrown out of your home should be far higher than the bar for getting thrown out of your hotel room.
> Sonder's properties often have no staff and rely on door codes for guest entry.
I encountered this recently.
The reception desk had a large portrait monitor with a person videoconferenced in from a remote location. You talked to the display. She walked you through scanning credit card using a reader installed below the screen and printing out room access code.
It was doable, but seemed like a strange dysfunctional future had arrived.
The business model is you hire a live in “manager”, often times a recent immigrant, in quotes because they don’t manage anything, but they are called that so they don’t qualify for overtime.
Then you pay them $50k or so per year, might even be for a married couple, and the kiosk helps them get sleep by avoiding interruptions overnight. But they’re still there in case of fire or police emergency to provide access and keys and whatnot.
The person on the kiosk is obviously in India/Colombia/Philippines/etc where labor is cheaper and they can handle multiple hotels at once.
Personally, I avoid those types of hotels, but don’t know if it will be as much of a choice in the future. I so like online checkin with Hilton’s app and using my phone as a key, so I rarely see the front desk anyway.
I’ve stayed >150 nights at Marriott hotels this year and was pleasantly surprised when Sonder started popping up as an option. But the thing I noticed is that, at least in the markets I visited, it was often MORE expensive than the local 4/5 star hotel. But with the hotel I got the guarantee of breakfast, a good gym, 24 hour reception, upgrades, laundry service, etc. As a result I never booked one.
My feeling with Sonder is similar to that of my feeling with Airbnb: it’s fantastic for those longer trips where you want some extra amenities in the room like a kitchen. But, for general business or short-term travel, I just don’t get it. It no longer wins on price, and it loses by an order of magnitude on convenience. Why not just pick a hotel?
When I first booked with Sonder back in 2023 in Montreal, they were $20-40 less per night. This year, things were about break even.
At least in Montreal, the Sonder offered a very nice location in the city (especially taking into account my office location) where there were very little chain hotels nearby. I saw it as a "more predictable AirBnB".
Bummer, I really liked being able to stay in that area.
Let's say you own and operate a small independent hotel, some techies from San Francisco offer to perma-book every room for the next three years solid for some fraction of your normal room rate. You keep operating your hotel, the techies send you regular guests (and handle all payments), and at the end of the month you get the same guaranteed income whether business was bad or good.
All goes well for a while but the techies start slipping on payments. First it's a few days, but sometimes they miss by a few weeks, so you schedule a call with the VP to straighten things out. Eventually they get a few months behind, you're fed up and demand immediate payment or you will stop lodging their guests (who have paid the techies, but somehow the money has not made it to you). CEO calls to straighten things out, promises to wire the money by Friday, just please please please don't evict any guests. You agree, but Friday comes and goes with crickets, and on Saturday morning you kick everyone out.
The techies are insolvent but not yet bankrupt. They have been running their business off accounts receivable (which rightfully belong to you) for months. There is no way to work things out, the money isn't there. You have been hosting their guests and you will get back pennies on the dollars you are owed, years later. Time to pull the plug.
If you've had Silicon Valley techies book all your rooms for several years, and it's their logo on the side of the building, and all your customers have booked with them? You don't have a reputation.
In most cases hotel guests aren't prepaid. There will usually be a credit card hold but the guest hasn't actually paid yet. Innkeepers generally have the legal right to refuse service for (almost) any reason and simply not charge the guest for any additional nights.
It has happened multiple times that when an airline goes bankrupt, passengers at a layover become stranded at the layover. Some businesses go out of business very abruptly.
Sonder is the noun for the realization that each random person you see has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
I guess the company lived up to its name by reminding every guest that the company itself has(had?) a “life” as complex and eventfull as the guest’s own.
I remember a case (maybe 30 years ago?) where a local health club chain went bankrupt, and anything anyone had left in their lockers was stuck there until the judge ruled on the case.
> Superior Court Judge Barbara Rouse entered a temporary restraining order, forbidding Estridge and his eight Joy of Movement corporations from selling any assets or real estate. On Thursday, Judge Elbert Tuttle also placed liens on real estate and bank accounts belonging to Estridge and his companies.
But your stuff in the gym's locker aren't the gym's "assets"? Same if you parked your car in some bankrupt hotel's parking lot. Just because it's on some bankrupt company's property, doesn't mean your car is up for grabs by creditors.
The only trouble is that the building probably does count as the gym's assets, so even though your stuff isn't technically frozen, you can't really go in to get your stuff. But if for whatever reason you could (eg. breaking in?), you'd be in the clear to grab your stuff.
> your stuff in the gym's locker aren't the gym's "assets"?
A key component of bankrutcy is figuring out what belongs to whom. You say the stuff in your locker is yours. A credit may claim the company stored its idk staplers in a neighbouring locker. Usually, the gym would moderate that dispute. But given they're bankrupt, what you want to avoid is the creditor hiring a dude to empty out the locker of staplers into their storage locker opening your locker and doing that to it.
Not surprised. Our one experience using Sonder was horrible. Toilet didn’t work and was constantly flushing water. Took forever to get connected to someone. Then they said that they didn’t have maintenance to send until the next day. Asked to be moved. Next room was much worse (other broken stuff, visibly poor condition) but at least the toilet worked? They didn’t have other rooms to change us to. At that point it had been several hours on the phone, so we said fuck it. We need to eat and sleep after our day of travel. Not get hot potatoed around between clueless customer support. The only other two people I know who tried Sonder had similarly shitty experiences that swore them off too.
Terrible look for Marriott. We've been considering joining either Bonvoy or HHonors and discussing the merits of either chain. Mostly just for something to talk about, as we're too poor to stay at either for significant amounts of time, but nevertheless.
Marriott took the route of spreading out their brands. Sheraton, oh that's Marriott? I see. Westin? Huh. Le Méridien, never heard of … oh, Marriott.
Whereas Hilton seem proud enough to stick their name in a thing, even if it's a trailing '…by Hilton'. I wonder how this affects, say, bringing in a new brand.
'Sonder': anonymous. Never heard of it, until now. Gives Marriott some distance. Goes to hell? Cut it. How hard do you really need to try to onboard that brand?
'Sonder by Hilton': I know who owns that. I know which brand to blame when it goes to crap. Directly affects the core offering.
Hotel standards have gone way down since covid. Hilton or Marriott don’t mean as much, and recent reviews from a source you trust are about as good as it gets for predicting quality.
If you still do guidebooks, it’s baffling that you get the Lonely Planet. After all, already in the early millennium there were magazine investigative pieces and tell-all books by former LP writers that the publisher was not actually researching everything on the ground, but was just putting together things found on the internet or making stuff up. I see that there are accusations that recent guides rely on AI generation.
What got LP flack has now spread to other guidebook publishers with little furor. I looked at a Rough Guide recently that had all the tell-tale signs that the publisher no longer considers fact-checking and quality control necessary steps. I do like a good guidebook, but in English that means only Bradt these days for its combination of abundant historical context and local knowledge, since so many of its guides are written by people who have been resident in the country for many years and often have an areal-studies background.
Honestly, all we need is a decent hotel recommendation. LP does the job.
We guide ourselves around; that's not the sort of advice we're after. I didn't know this about LP though, and hadn't heard of Bradt. Next time that's what I need, I'll look them up.
My experience with LP is that they went way down in quality after Red Ventures (who own CNET, Bankrate.com etc.) bought them in 2020. I stopped trusting them completely after the CNET AI scandal- wikipedia no longer considers CNET to be a reliable source, and I'm not sure why I should trust LP either.
It turns out that living in a high trust environment is a lot better than living in a low trust environment, but if we're going to be living in a low trust environment, better to understand it than to pretend we can still act like it's still high trust.
>She said there was a sharp decline in revenue "arising from Sonder's participation in Marriott's Bonvoy reservation system".
This will be an interesting case study to piece together. What were the factors that lead revenue to go down on expansion of your marketing and access reach?
I have my own suspicions, but the backstory with this is probably way crazier than I'm even thinking. Like, "Why would anyone ever sign that?" level crazy.
It's agreement with Marriot was "completed" in August 2024. It was absolutely a hail mary.
While they might describe it as a integration failure, I think what they were actually hoping for was:
a) integration into Marriot's reservation system would reduce operating costs. From my user perspective, it looked like the Sonder system got completely replaced (like I had to make a new account and upload new ID...).
b) "Somehow" the Marriot integration would lead to increased bookings.
Both their 2025 and 2024 annual filings indicate that they were well aware of where things were going. Honestly, the filings don't really paint an optimistic picture of their ability to succeed, even with the Marriot deal.
I've been guessing that the problems existed prior to the Marriot deal; why would they give up their front door to a competitor otherwise? But I agree that it's got to be a wildly crazy story.
what consequences can you put on a bankrupt company?
I guess that guests might have claims for not used part of the stay but that’s going to be handled by bankruptcy process and there are rules who get money back in which order I guess employees get their paychecks first or something.
What if the company that is about to go bankrupt fails to pay its insurance premiums? Seems fairly likely to happen. About-to-be-bankrupt companies generally get behind on all their bills.
Don't worry, I happen to be knowledgeable about this.
Some key differences that come to mind (obviously YMMV):
Home insurance stops almost as soon as you stop paying vs. corporate insurance which is usually a bit more lenient and even has things like "tail coverage" in place.
The regulatory protections that apply to home insurance are very different to the ones applying to corporate insurance.
It's not uncommon for corporate insurance to cover events that happened while the company was insured, even if by the time the claim is filed the policy has been canceled.
Insurance is considered an asset of a company, and a judge can rule over what happens to them. This come into play particularly when bankruptcy is involved.
Many commercial insurance contracts, under some situations, cannot be canceled by the insurer, even if the company stops paying their premiums.
Anyway, I know on a naive approach it's easy to think that "all insurance is the same", but once you scratch a bit more than the surface of it you'll see it's a very complex affair!
> it's easy to think that "all insurance is the same"
Such an assumption is not necessary. (The difference between consumer and commercial insurance is also not germane when discussing a novel bonding scheme.)
If you’re getting thrown off by the home insurance analogy, think regulatory capital instead.
> regulatory protections that apply to home insurance are very different to the ones applying to corporate insurance
We’re discussing a hypothetical regulatory environment. Given the insurance is guaranteeing consumer protections, one would expect it to be strict.
How would it work? If any of the management knew the bankruptcy was pending and were still allowing bookings, they are personally responsible for the costs.
LLC were designed precisely to avoid that responsibility.
The idea being probably that not risking your entire personal wealth just to lead company would lead to more entrepreneurship, but it clearly ended up with small businesses (without legal or clear reason to make it LLC) not doing that cos of bureucracy, and everyone above abusing that construct wherever they can.
CEOs ballooning compensation would even be understandable in conditions where their biggest fuck up could get their private stuff seized but...
> That would kind of destroy the whole rationale for corporations to exist
For management? Not at all. It's almost just customary that employment agreements don't make employees, including senior managers, personally liable for their mistakes.
You'd just have to pay Board members and executives boatloads more. (Or, more accurately, they'd be able to justify more pay for the risk. And then go and purchase insurance to offload it anyway.)
> Might have to be shank insurance, if they get real jail
You’d have a difficult time proving intent, nevertheless. The only practical solution is reducing the standard of proof, which is historically a straight line to hard oligarchy.
> A cop having a bad day, can ruin your whole life. Pay the cop well, but also, ruin their life, if they abuse their power
Cops deal in violence, which is far more black and white than e.g. being a hotelier.
That said, starting with cops is a good idea. Culture of responsibility and all that.
Sounds good? I mean, we tried the whole corporation without responsibility for quite a while. It doesn't seem to work very well and especially on HN there's at least one post reminding us of that every day.
1. Secure creditors (like liens on specific assets)
2. Administrative expensive post bankruptcy
3. Priority unsecured claims like employee wages
4. General unsecured creditors like suppliers and customers
5. Shareholders
I think customers who paid by credit card or have travel insurance might be able to make a faster claim with those as the legal process is slow especially since it involves multiple countries where they do business.
Some credit cards that cater to travelers might actually have that benefit. Would be worth checking if you travel a lot and like to stay at quirky boutique hotels that might turn out to be insolvent.
I don't know the details of this particular case but generally most guests who reserved their stay using a credit card wouldn't have actually paid anything yet. There is no insurance claim if they're not out any money. Most likely the appointed bankruptcy administrators will charge the evicted guests for the nights that they actually stayed in the hotels and cancel the rest of their reservations. The guests are legally obligated to pay for services already rendered, even if the customer service was terrible.
> How would it work if hotels are bankrupt? what consequences can you put on a bankrupt company?
Force them sign a special type of insurance, or something else where other companies can temporarily pick up the pieces until the current stays are over. Make the company pay into a fund to pay for that before they get their license to operate the hotel, and make it a legal requirement that the fund needs to be able to cover all the currently active stays for N days. Consequences can be put on the people who run the company, that if they don't fulfill their legal duties they get fines or even prison.
Of course, this is just me brainstorming ideas in two minutes, I'm sure with a proper legal system and actual professionals they could work something out to protect guests and works better than "Sorry, we're bankrupt, you need to leave in one hour or sooner".
Yeah, seems wild to me that the hotels can just straight up kick people out immediately like that. Why not let them finish out their stay? Like, it wouldn't have killed Marriott to just eat that cost and generate some goodwill and gain some potential future customers.
Are they really operating on such slim margins that it would have been a threat to their business/chains if they didn't immediately evict and re-book the room(s) out?
I'm not sure they mean financially, I think they mean protection from being made unexpectedly homeless. There are an array of tenancy laws to prevent this from happening, but they don't seem to cover bankruptcy of hotels.
The specific Sonder hotel mentioned in the article is still listed on the Mariott web site.[1]
"A stay you can count on. Experience travel without the guesswork. While every space is unique, you can always count on the Sonder Standard. All stays feature designer details, keyless entry, fast free WiFi and our 24/7 digital concierge."
Trying to make a reservation returns "Your session timed out, but you can start a new hotel search below."
This badly hurts Mariott's brand. Their page reads as if they stand behind Sonder. Marriott supposedly has about 30 brands, and now you have to ask which of them are fake fronts.
[1] https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/nycho-the-merchant-hot...
Having been affected by this personally, I don't think Marriott cares about their brand at this point as they have achieved relative monopoly status. There are plenty of other horrible things they've accomplished in the last few years besides this. It makes me want to watch out for CitizenM similarly, because it's increasingly unclear what Marriott's actual role in your stay even is anymore.
The term monopoly means nothing if Marriott is one.
Not only does Marriott not own 95% of hotels with their brands, but in any given area, you can almost certainly find a competing Hilton/IHG/Choice/Hyatt brand.
It’s about as competitive as a market can get. What you probably are not aware of is a location where half or more hotels of the above brands are owned by the same people, and they franchise all the brands and choose all the prices. But even that is relatively rare.
I took a long road trip this summer and felt like I had plenty of options. My cumulative stays ended up: 1) Hilton 2) IHG 3) Choice 4) camping 5) AirBnB
My Hyatt and Marriott experiences sucked...
I have stayed at a bunch of hotels in the last six months and come to the conclusion that price, brand, and reviews have no relation at all with quality.
Did you discover any reliable indicators for how good the stay would be?
The staff turnover in 95% of hotels is so high, you need reviews from at least a few recent guests to be able to predict anything.
I mostly look at the most recent reviews, and found them useful if not definitive.
Incredible, given the hurdles Marriott asks franchisors to jump through.
A good franchise will bring in X million in profits and a bad one will bring in XYZ million in reputational damage.
A good unicorn will bring in XYZ billion[1] in profits and a bad one will bring in XYZ million in reputational damage.
Which is exactly why franchise operators get put through the wringer, while 'pod hotel but with an app' startups get the red carpet treatment.
---
[1] Yes, I know that is bullshit, but I'm not an exec, I don't get paid to be wildly optimistic.
I get a big red popup saying that Sonder is no longer affiliated with Marriott?
Not getting that here, but some images are returning 404 errors. Somewhere, someone is probably trying to scrub the Mariott site manually.
Their CEO, Francis Davidson, Forbes 30 under 30. Strikes again.
Unicorn status (1 billion) in 2020, to bankrupt in 2025. Another Zero Interest Rate Phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonder_(company) https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisdavidson/
> Forbes 30 under 30
Really amazing how much of a reliable indicator this has become.
I know of a startup founder (I think YC) who "won" the 30 Under 30 and now goes to great lengths to hide this fact, i.e. it's never mentioned on their LinkedIn or any online profile that they have control over.
Probably can't stop search engines from indexing Forbes.com but still.
Time Man of the Year is even worse. That’s like being led up a ladder into a big wicker man.
TIME naming everyone Person of the Year in 2006 is really what started us down this twisted timeline
To be fair, Person of the Year is a prize that is more "This is a person who impacted the world", not necessarily "This is a good person that deserves praise". Both Stalin (twice!) and Hitler been Person of the Year.
Forbes 30 under 30 seems to be a bit more interesting for narcissists, as it really focuses on their "great achievements".
[dead]
I'm not 100% sure - there's quite a few YC founders who have been on the Forbes 30 under 30. As we're commenting on one of their sites, I feel obligated to point out how great it is as an accelerator as well!
> Forbes 30 under 30
Isn't this one of those pay-to-play accolades?
was this a case where a 1bil valuation in 2020 was increased because of covid (people wanted hotels that didn't require any human interaction) OR they were valued at 1bil pre-covid and covid killed their momentum when travel stopped?
They IPO'd in 2021 and were worth about 22 billion until Jan 2022. Then a precipitous fall to about 2.2 billion in 2023, 220 million in 2024, and now 22 million.
>They IPO'd in 2021 and were worth about 22 billion until Jan 2022
No, they IPOed via a merger with SPAC in January 2022, and almost immediately the price of the company took a dip. 2021 was probably when the SPAC was founded/IPOed, and the relatively flat price prior to 2022 was because it was basically a pot of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonder_(company)#History
That's such a red flag by now. That and a Softbank investment. And I'm not sure which is worse.
Hope he cashed out by dumping his shares in the private market.
Dude ejected himself 4 mo ago to "work on something new"? Nice one.
He's just hoping to be the next Altman.
You're thinking of Neumann, Altman will be in the same in the future, though. New equals old.
Didn't Altman fail upward multiple times before working at YC?
I was at some Forbes 30 under 30 party a couple years ago - as in, I started noticing a large number of guests were that - and I started offering myself up as a future character witness
Sounds like something Michael Malice might say. Or P.J. O’Rourke.
If you haven’t heard of him, check him out in his podcast ‘Your Welcome’, spelling intentional.
Fun fact: Swedish 'sönder' (with umlaut) means 'broken'
We have the same word in English, as "sunder" (sundered).
We also have the same word in English, as "sonder".
> noun, the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sonder
Perhaps more commonly known in the forms "asunder" (as in "torn asunder") and "sundry" (meaning "various").
Wait for 2 sunders before DPS
this is why i read this site
I was staying in a apartment in London a long time ago and a Sunday(!) bailiffs came and kicked everyone in the building out in 3 hours. The reason was that the rent hadn't been paid to the building owner by the management company. Most people just left and lost the rent they had paid. These things happen and there are no protection for tenants unfortunately.
The UK government just enacted a law last week that gives tenants in England a lot more protection against that kind of thing.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guide-to-the-rent...
That's for long term rentals, and what gp describes was already illegal action against against a normal long term tenant . In the UK a tenancy is a property right not just a contract -it's a right to a specific property, not just a contract with a person. So if the tenancy was executed with the consent of the owner, they can't just kick out the tenants even if the management company didn't pay them . That's because the tenants right to the property isn't just via the chain of contracts between them and the owner. For a hotel room or Airbnb, or a lodger, very different rules apply
And there was no prior warning? That seems unreasonable but maybe it happened that way.
This is unreasonable. In any just society, the bailiffs would be slapping cuffs on the owners of the management company, while the tenants would get notice.
You can't throw someone out of their home without notice because you have a business dispute with some third party.
>In any just society, the bailiffs would be slapping cuffs on the owners of the management company, while the tenants would get notice.
...for leasing to a hotel chain that later went bankrupt?
>You can't throw someone out of their home without notice because you have a business dispute with some third party.
It's a hotel. Hotels typically have less tenant rights than long-term accommodations.
> ...for leasing to a hotel chain that later went bankrupt?
No, the story in the great-grandparent's post is not about a hotel, it's about a residential lease where:
1. They were paying rent to a property management company who managed a building's apartments.
2. The property management company stopped paying rent to the building owner.
3. The building owner had the police throw out every person living in those apartments with 0 day notice.
The person at fault is #2 - the property management company. That is who the building owner's dispute is with. It is criminal that the people who were thrown out onto the street with zero notice were the tenants who have up to this point upheld their end of the agreement.
The bar for getting thrown out of your home should be far higher than the bar for getting thrown out of your hotel room.
> Sonder's properties often have no staff and rely on door codes for guest entry.
I encountered this recently.
The reception desk had a large portrait monitor with a person videoconferenced in from a remote location. You talked to the display. She walked you through scanning credit card using a reader installed below the screen and printing out room access code.
It was doable, but seemed like a strange dysfunctional future had arrived.
The penultimate step before just swapping them with some AI simulacrum.
The business model is you hire a live in “manager”, often times a recent immigrant, in quotes because they don’t manage anything, but they are called that so they don’t qualify for overtime.
Then you pay them $50k or so per year, might even be for a married couple, and the kiosk helps them get sleep by avoiding interruptions overnight. But they’re still there in case of fire or police emergency to provide access and keys and whatnot.
The person on the kiosk is obviously in India/Colombia/Philippines/etc where labor is cheaper and they can handle multiple hotels at once.
Personally, I avoid those types of hotels, but don’t know if it will be as much of a choice in the future. I so like online checkin with Hilton’s app and using my phone as a key, so I rarely see the front desk anyway.
I’ve stayed >150 nights at Marriott hotels this year and was pleasantly surprised when Sonder started popping up as an option. But the thing I noticed is that, at least in the markets I visited, it was often MORE expensive than the local 4/5 star hotel. But with the hotel I got the guarantee of breakfast, a good gym, 24 hour reception, upgrades, laundry service, etc. As a result I never booked one.
My feeling with Sonder is similar to that of my feeling with Airbnb: it’s fantastic for those longer trips where you want some extra amenities in the room like a kitchen. But, for general business or short-term travel, I just don’t get it. It no longer wins on price, and it loses by an order of magnitude on convenience. Why not just pick a hotel?
When I first booked with Sonder back in 2023 in Montreal, they were $20-40 less per night. This year, things were about break even.
At least in Montreal, the Sonder offered a very nice location in the city (especially taking into account my office location) where there were very little chain hotels nearby. I saw it as a "more predictable AirBnB".
Bummer, I really liked being able to stay in that area.
Why wouldn't they just let people finish out their stay?
Sending an email to people saying you need to leave by noon seems crazy.
Let's say you own and operate a small independent hotel, some techies from San Francisco offer to perma-book every room for the next three years solid for some fraction of your normal room rate. You keep operating your hotel, the techies send you regular guests (and handle all payments), and at the end of the month you get the same guaranteed income whether business was bad or good.
All goes well for a while but the techies start slipping on payments. First it's a few days, but sometimes they miss by a few weeks, so you schedule a call with the VP to straighten things out. Eventually they get a few months behind, you're fed up and demand immediate payment or you will stop lodging their guests (who have paid the techies, but somehow the money has not made it to you). CEO calls to straighten things out, promises to wire the money by Friday, just please please please don't evict any guests. You agree, but Friday comes and goes with crickets, and on Saturday morning you kick everyone out.
Good way to trash your reputation.
Just stop accepting new guests and work things out with the techies.
The techies are insolvent but not yet bankrupt. They have been running their business off accounts receivable (which rightfully belong to you) for months. There is no way to work things out, the money isn't there. You have been hosting their guests and you will get back pennies on the dollars you are owed, years later. Time to pull the plug.
What reputation? These people don't know you.
If you've had Silicon Valley techies book all your rooms for several years, and it's their logo on the side of the building, and all your customers have booked with them? You don't have a reputation.
Legal requirements to provide food, services, security that suppliers will no longer provide. Not to mention staff.
Also insurance, maybe?
What about their legal requirement to deliver what was paid for?
In most cases hotel guests aren't prepaid. There will usually be a credit card hold but the guest hasn't actually paid yet. Innkeepers generally have the legal right to refuse service for (almost) any reason and simply not charge the guest for any additional nights.
> What about their legal requirement to deliver what was paid for?
The guests don't have a contract with the hotel operator. Only with Sonder. The guests should have claims on Sonder. But it's bankrupt, so YMMV.
The company is bankrupt. It means they can't/won't/didn't honour their promises.
It has happened multiple times that when an airline goes bankrupt, passengers at a layover become stranded at the layover. Some businesses go out of business very abruptly.
The "hotel" they booked with has ceased to exist. They're just creditors now.
Sonder is the noun for the realization that each random person you see has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
I guess the company lived up to its name by reminding every guest that the company itself has(had?) a “life” as complex and eventfull as the guest’s own.
Bankruptcy can be a bitch.
I remember a case (maybe 30 years ago?) where a local health club chain went bankrupt, and anything anyone had left in their lockers was stuck there until the judge ruled on the case.
Here's the case - a judge froze the company's assets, which meant that if you had any of your personal property on the premises, you were SOL.
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/03/28/Court-freezes-assets...
> Superior Court Judge Barbara Rouse entered a temporary restraining order, forbidding Estridge and his eight Joy of Movement corporations from selling any assets or real estate. On Thursday, Judge Elbert Tuttle also placed liens on real estate and bank accounts belonging to Estridge and his companies.
But your stuff in the gym's locker aren't the gym's "assets"? Same if you parked your car in some bankrupt hotel's parking lot. Just because it's on some bankrupt company's property, doesn't mean your car is up for grabs by creditors.
The only trouble is that the building probably does count as the gym's assets, so even though your stuff isn't technically frozen, you can't really go in to get your stuff. But if for whatever reason you could (eg. breaking in?), you'd be in the clear to grab your stuff.
> your stuff in the gym's locker aren't the gym's "assets"?
A key component of bankrutcy is figuring out what belongs to whom. You say the stuff in your locker is yours. A credit may claim the company stored its idk staplers in a neighbouring locker. Usually, the gym would moderate that dispute. But given they're bankrupt, what you want to avoid is the creditor hiring a dude to empty out the locker of staplers into their storage locker opening your locker and doing that to it.
Not surprised. Our one experience using Sonder was horrible. Toilet didn’t work and was constantly flushing water. Took forever to get connected to someone. Then they said that they didn’t have maintenance to send until the next day. Asked to be moved. Next room was much worse (other broken stuff, visibly poor condition) but at least the toilet worked? They didn’t have other rooms to change us to. At that point it had been several hours on the phone, so we said fuck it. We need to eat and sleep after our day of travel. Not get hot potatoed around between clueless customer support. The only other two people I know who tried Sonder had similarly shitty experiences that swore them off too.
apparently guests were literally fired that day.
Terrible look for Marriott. We've been considering joining either Bonvoy or HHonors and discussing the merits of either chain. Mostly just for something to talk about, as we're too poor to stay at either for significant amounts of time, but nevertheless.
Marriott took the route of spreading out their brands. Sheraton, oh that's Marriott? I see. Westin? Huh. Le Méridien, never heard of … oh, Marriott.
Whereas Hilton seem proud enough to stick their name in a thing, even if it's a trailing '…by Hilton'. I wonder how this affects, say, bringing in a new brand.
'Sonder': anonymous. Never heard of it, until now. Gives Marriott some distance. Goes to hell? Cut it. How hard do you really need to try to onboard that brand?
'Sonder by Hilton': I know who owns that. I know which brand to blame when it goes to crap. Directly affects the core offering.
I just made up my mind whose scheme I'm joining.
You can always just join both. It’s not an either/or.
Well yeah but this was a hypothetical about which one you’d actually use. Far better to pick a horse when it comes to earning loyalty status.
> Le Méridien, never heard of
Big in North Africa and generally around the Med. Ownership changed quite a few times, I didn't know it ended up in Marriott.
Hotel standards have gone way down since covid. Hilton or Marriott don’t mean as much, and recent reviews from a source you trust are about as good as it gets for predicting quality.
‘A source you trust’ no longer including any of the major booking sites, alas.
You know what we do now? We get the Lonely Planet.
If you still do guidebooks, it’s baffling that you get the Lonely Planet. After all, already in the early millennium there were magazine investigative pieces and tell-all books by former LP writers that the publisher was not actually researching everything on the ground, but was just putting together things found on the internet or making stuff up. I see that there are accusations that recent guides rely on AI generation.
What got LP flack has now spread to other guidebook publishers with little furor. I looked at a Rough Guide recently that had all the tell-tale signs that the publisher no longer considers fact-checking and quality control necessary steps. I do like a good guidebook, but in English that means only Bradt these days for its combination of abundant historical context and local knowledge, since so many of its guides are written by people who have been resident in the country for many years and often have an areal-studies background.
Honestly, all we need is a decent hotel recommendation. LP does the job.
We guide ourselves around; that's not the sort of advice we're after. I didn't know this about LP though, and hadn't heard of Bradt. Next time that's what I need, I'll look them up.
My experience with LP is that they went way down in quality after Red Ventures (who own CNET, Bankrate.com etc.) bought them in 2020. I stopped trusting them completely after the CNET AI scandal- wikipedia no longer considers CNET to be a reliable source, and I'm not sure why I should trust LP either.
It turns out that living in a high trust environment is a lot better than living in a low trust environment, but if we're going to be living in a low trust environment, better to understand it than to pretend we can still act like it's still high trust.
>She said there was a sharp decline in revenue "arising from Sonder's participation in Marriott's Bonvoy reservation system".
This will be an interesting case study to piece together. What were the factors that lead revenue to go down on expansion of your marketing and access reach?
I have my own suspicions, but the backstory with this is probably way crazier than I'm even thinking. Like, "Why would anyone ever sign that?" level crazy.
Sonder has been bleeding cash ever since it went public (via SPAC).
https://companiesmarketcap.com/cad/sonder/cash-on-hand/
It's agreement with Marriot was "completed" in August 2024. It was absolutely a hail mary.
While they might describe it as a integration failure, I think what they were actually hoping for was:
a) integration into Marriot's reservation system would reduce operating costs. From my user perspective, it looked like the Sonder system got completely replaced (like I had to make a new account and upload new ID...).
b) "Somehow" the Marriot integration would lead to increased bookings.
Both their 2025 and 2024 annual filings indicate that they were well aware of where things were going. Honestly, the filings don't really paint an optimistic picture of their ability to succeed, even with the Marriot deal.
I've been guessing that the problems existed prior to the Marriot deal; why would they give up their front door to a competitor otherwise? But I agree that it's got to be a wildly crazy story.
Now you're experiencing https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/sonder!
Cool link!
Reminds me of this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Ye8fBEkcc
Nice track.
There has to be laws protecting guests against this.
I would be extremely surprised if hotels can just do this with no consequences, even if you somehow signed into it on their T&C.
Edit: Downvotes on this? Really? Hail corporate!
How would it work if hotels are bankrupt?
what consequences can you put on a bankrupt company?
I guess that guests might have claims for not used part of the stay but that’s going to be handled by bankruptcy process and there are rules who get money back in which order I guess employees get their paychecks first or something.
A solution would be to require hotels to carry insurance for this event.
What if the company that is about to go bankrupt fails to pay its insurance premiums? Seems fairly likely to happen. About-to-be-bankrupt companies generally get behind on all their bills.
> What if the company that is about to go bankrupt fails to pay its insurance premiums?
Same as what happens when a homeowner fails to pay their home insurance.
Wrong.
Don't worry, I happen to be knowledgeable about this.
Some key differences that come to mind (obviously YMMV):
Home insurance stops almost as soon as you stop paying vs. corporate insurance which is usually a bit more lenient and even has things like "tail coverage" in place.
The regulatory protections that apply to home insurance are very different to the ones applying to corporate insurance.
It's not uncommon for corporate insurance to cover events that happened while the company was insured, even if by the time the claim is filed the policy has been canceled.
Insurance is considered an asset of a company, and a judge can rule over what happens to them. This come into play particularly when bankruptcy is involved.
Many commercial insurance contracts, under some situations, cannot be canceled by the insurer, even if the company stops paying their premiums.
Anyway, I know on a naive approach it's easy to think that "all insurance is the same", but once you scratch a bit more than the surface of it you'll see it's a very complex affair!
> it's easy to think that "all insurance is the same"
Such an assumption is not necessary. (The difference between consumer and commercial insurance is also not germane when discussing a novel bonding scheme.)
If you’re getting thrown off by the home insurance analogy, think regulatory capital instead.
> regulatory protections that apply to home insurance are very different to the ones applying to corporate insurance
We’re discussing a hypothetical regulatory environment. Given the insurance is guaranteeing consumer protections, one would expect it to be strict.
How would it work? If any of the management knew the bankruptcy was pending and were still allowing bookings, they are personally responsible for the costs.
If they can't afford it, they face prison time.
I bet that would fix the issue damn quickly.
There are soooo many issues that would be fixed by holding the C-Suite (and maybe even the Board and/or shareholders) personally responsible.
Won't happen in this timeline, though.
LLC were designed precisely to avoid that responsibility.
The idea being probably that not risking your entire personal wealth just to lead company would lead to more entrepreneurship, but it clearly ended up with small businesses (without legal or clear reason to make it LLC) not doing that cos of bureucracy, and everyone above abusing that construct wherever they can.
CEOs ballooning compensation would even be understandable in conditions where their biggest fuck up could get their private stuff seized but...
That would kind of destroy the whole rationale for corporations to exist.
> That would kind of destroy the whole rationale for corporations to exist
For management? Not at all. It's almost just customary that employment agreements don't make employees, including senior managers, personally liable for their mistakes.
You'd just have to pay Board members and executives boatloads more. (Or, more accurately, they'd be able to justify more pay for the risk. And then go and purchase insurance to offload it anyway.)
Might have to be shank insurance, if they get real jail time.
I’m all for paying folks that legitimately have real power and responsibility, very well, but I would also hold them to rigorous standards.
For example, police. A cop having a bad day, can ruin your whole life. Pay the cop well, but also, ruin their life, if they abuse their power.
Again, we’re in the Dark Timeline, so that won’t happen.
> Might have to be shank insurance, if they get real jail
You’d have a difficult time proving intent, nevertheless. The only practical solution is reducing the standard of proof, which is historically a straight line to hard oligarchy.
> A cop having a bad day, can ruin your whole life. Pay the cop well, but also, ruin their life, if they abuse their power
Cops deal in violence, which is far more black and white than e.g. being a hotelier.
That said, starting with cops is a good idea. Culture of responsibility and all that.
Sounds good? I mean, we tried the whole corporation without responsibility for quite a while. It doesn't seem to work very well and especially on HN there's at least one post reminding us of that every day.
Isn't that just because the successes are invisible?
Successes are still visible... But maybe we'd be ok with fewer successes and fewer failures?
Prison doesn't fix every issue. It fixes very few of them actually, except the public's demand for punishment.
Personal financial liability would probably be more effective.
From what I can lookup in the US the order it is:
1. Secure creditors (like liens on specific assets)
2. Administrative expensive post bankruptcy
3. Priority unsecured claims like employee wages
4. General unsecured creditors like suppliers and customers
5. Shareholders
I think customers who paid by credit card or have travel insurance might be able to make a faster claim with those as the legal process is slow especially since it involves multiple countries where they do business.
Some credit cards that cater to travelers might actually have that benefit. Would be worth checking if you travel a lot and like to stay at quirky boutique hotels that might turn out to be insolvent.
I don't know the details of this particular case but generally most guests who reserved their stay using a credit card wouldn't have actually paid anything yet. There is no insurance claim if they're not out any money. Most likely the appointed bankruptcy administrators will charge the evicted guests for the nights that they actually stayed in the hotels and cancel the rest of their reservations. The guests are legally obligated to pay for services already rendered, even if the customer service was terrible.
> How would it work if hotels are bankrupt? what consequences can you put on a bankrupt company?
Force them sign a special type of insurance, or something else where other companies can temporarily pick up the pieces until the current stays are over. Make the company pay into a fund to pay for that before they get their license to operate the hotel, and make it a legal requirement that the fund needs to be able to cover all the currently active stays for N days. Consequences can be put on the people who run the company, that if they don't fulfill their legal duties they get fines or even prison.
Of course, this is just me brainstorming ideas in two minutes, I'm sure with a proper legal system and actual professionals they could work something out to protect guests and works better than "Sorry, we're bankrupt, you need to leave in one hour or sooner".
> How would it work if hotels are bankrupt?
You require a bond.
People should check their travel insurance, if it covers things like this. Travel insurance doesn't cost a lot, and comes with a ton of benefits.
Yeah, seems wild to me that the hotels can just straight up kick people out immediately like that. Why not let them finish out their stay? Like, it wouldn't have killed Marriott to just eat that cost and generate some goodwill and gain some potential future customers.
Are they really operating on such slim margins that it would have been a threat to their business/chains if they didn't immediately evict and re-book the room(s) out?
>There has to be laws protecting guests against this.
If you paid by credit card, just start a chargeback?
I'm not sure they mean financially, I think they mean protection from being made unexpectedly homeless. There are an array of tenancy laws to prevent this from happening, but they don't seem to cover bankruptcy of hotels.
> There has to be laws protecting guests against this
Chances are there are, but it varies by city.
> Edit: Downvotes on this?
Flagged. (Happy to unflag if edited.)
Leave it, no worries.
It was definitely surprising to see a backlash on that comment, though.
It also happens to be the comment with the deepest discussion, go figure.
> founded in Montreal, Canada
Shameful. Given the choice between integrity and money, it seems they chose money.
What does being founded in Montreal have to do with integrity?
You're right - nothing at all, I suppose.