Gloom, and no room, for solar spectacle
Toronto family upset after Niagara Falls hotel cancels reservations made a year ahead of eclipse
A Toronto family that booked rooms at a Niagara Falls hotel almost a year ago in anticipation of the total solar eclipse is angry the hotel abruptly cancelled its reservations.
“I feel like we’re being punished at this point because we had the foresight to know what was happening and the hotels didn’t,” said Katherine Wilson, who in April 2023 booked three rooms for two nights at Wyndham Garden Niagara Falls Fallsview. “There are no hotel rooms left now and we have some very upset kids.”
Wilson, with her husband Steve and their two children, her brother and his son and their parents, were planning on spending two days in Niagara Falls to take in the rare celestial event April 8 and to also celebrate her nephew’s birthday.
“It was going to be a fun weekend, an eclipse/birthday celebration,” she said.
She said she was shocked when she received an email from the hotel earlier this month.
Wilson said the email said the hotel had booked “a large group” and the family’s reservations were cancelled.
Their reservations had been paid in full, at a cost of about $100 a night per room.
Wilson feels the cancellation is due to hoteliers wanting to charge premium prices during the eclipse as Niagara Falls is one of only a handful of Canadian cities to be directly in the eclipse’s path of totality.
As many as a million people are predicted to converge on the city to watch the event.
There has been a high demand for hotel rooms and, earlier this month, some rooms at area hotels were going for more than $1,000 a night around the time of the eclipse.
“When you put two and two together, they cancelled all the reservations that paid $100 a night pre-eclipse and then turned them around for god knows how much per night,” Wilson said.
She called the hotel to inquire if the family could be put into another hotel.
Wyndham Gardens falls under the Fallsview Group, which operates several hotels, including Embassy Suites by Hilton and Ramada by Wyndham.
“Basically, we were told we were out of luck,” Wilson said.
“They literally had our money since last April. We would like them to honour the agreement.”
Wilson said she has since discovered other individuals also had their reservations cancelled around the same time.
Representatives from Wyndham Garden and the Fallsview Group did not respond to emails and phone calls from the Niagara Falls Review seeking comment.
Meanwhile, the Wilsons plan to make the best of a bad situation. “We’re going to view it somewhere, but it will be from fighting the traffic in a car now instead of viewing it from a hotel.”