Pria Escalera, 18, outside Hotel DeBrett with her luggage after a semester of studying in Auckland. Photo / Supplied
Pria Escalera, 18, outside Hotel DeBrett with her luggage after a semester of studying in Auckland. Photo / Supplied
Two teenage girls who were complete strangers say they were “scared” and “outraged” after being forced to share a one-bed hotel room following a Jetstar flight cancellation.
The situation arose at Auckland’s Hotel DeBrett on Tuesday night, after 17-year-old Summer Lochhead was booked in a one-bed hotel room with another person who she did not know - and whose name on paper she says looked like a man.
The accommodation was arranged by Jetstar after a 6.30am flight from Auckland to Christchurch was cancelled on November 15.
While waiting at Auckland Airport for 10 hours for accommodation to be arranged, Lochhead struck up conversation with 18-year-old Pria Escalera who was also on the cancelled Jetstar flight to Christchurch.
After eventually getting the bus to Hotel DeBrett in Auckland city centre about 4pm that afternoon, Lochhead and Escalera found themselves in the foyer with a confronting situation.
“We arrived together and had had a very brief conversation on the bus, so we didn’t talk much at all,” Lochhead told the Herald.
“So I said yes [to sharing a room] because we were tired and there was nothing else that could have been done, and I just felt that would have been safer than to go with the other person that I hadn’t met, who I didn’t know how old they were, female or a male, or anything.”
Lochhead said the Hotel DeBrett reception staff confirmed that the other person on the cancelled Jetstar flight assigned to her room had already checked in and also said “they didn’t know me”.
“I guess they got there before me, they got the room,” Lochhead said.
“It was still a very uncomfortable situation, because I’m a very paranoid, very anxious person. So I was quite scared that something was going to happen. Obviously she [Escalera] turned out to be really nice but still it was extremely uncomfortable for the both of us, and it was just a situation that should not have happened.”
A Jetstar spokesperson told the Herald they have since been in contact with Lochhead to assure her they are “investigating how this one-off and unacceptable situation occurred”.
“Under no circumstances would we request or expect customers who aren’t related to share a room, not even friends or colleagues who are travelling together,” the Jetstar spokesperson said.
“We sincerely apologise for this unacceptable situation and have reached out to both customers to better understand what happened and offer our support and compensation. In the event of a cancellation where disrupted passengers require accommodation, we coordinate with our hotel provider to allocate rooms to customers and we’re looking into this case as a matter of urgency to prevent it happening again.”
The Jetstar spokesperson said they would be covering Lochhead’s out-of-pocket expenses including meals and transport.
"Under no circumstances would we request or expect customers who aren’t related to share a room," Jetstar says. Photo / Supplied
Escalera told the Herald she offered Lochhead to share her room because she was “visibly uncomfortable” in the foyer of Hotel DeBrett at the prospect of sharing a hotel room with the unknown stranger.
Escalera was also extremely spooked by the situation the two teens had been forced into.
“I was really uneasy and really scared about the concept of sleeping with a stranger, even for just one night,” Escalera said.
“I’m also appalled by Jetstar’s response to it because we did complain and they were extremely unhelpful. I was telling my partner and he was also upset and uncomfortable about the situation as well.
“It was a terrible, uncomfortable, uneasy experience which Jetstar should never have had us in.”
Both Escalere and Lochhead had to spend two nights in Hotel DeBrett from the cancelled flight, but a single room for each of the teenagers was arranged for the second night.
Escalera also especially wanted to defend the efforts of the Hotel DeBrett staff who she said were equally in the dark about the arrangements made by Jetstar, and she “felt sorry for because they were scrambling”.
“The hotel workers knew just as much information as we did, which was very little.”
Escalera, who was returning from her semester studying at Auckland University, and Lochhead who had been up in Auckland for a Conan Gray concert, are now both back in Christchurch.
Lochhead says she plans to write a letter of complaint to Jetstar for putting her in that situation.
Escalera says she would like some sort of compensation.
“I just think it was ridiculous how it was us in charge of our safety. Like Jetstar didn’t really handle that at all. I’m quite uneasy about the fact that we were the ones in charge of that and not Jetstar arranging,” Escalera said.
“It’s not good enough. The fact that a 17-year-old girl was put in this position. She was originally going to be put with someone that was much older than me, because I was the only other teenage girl. What if it was a middle-aged man?”
