Stranded Overnight at an Airport With No Money? Now What?
First, be assured there are options as long as you have devoted friends or relatives available.
I'll mention just two of them here, as they are the most common options I experience behind the front desk of an airport hotel.
Have money wired: Many stranded passengers ask me if there is a place nearby where they can receive wired money.
This is a popular option it seems, perhaps because this option has been around for ages or perhaps because you no longer have to traipse down to a local office with cash.
You can call from the comfort of your home or office and charge money immediately to a debit or credit card.
There are several reasons why this.
may not work for you however.
Our local 'branch' is in a grocery store about 3/4 of a mile away.
They open at 8 or 9 am and close at 8 pm and my experience is you need at least an hour leeway before money is approved, sent and received.
If it is already past 7 pm then, you probably won't get the money that evening.
Even if you did, how are you going to pay for a cab to get there by 8, unless you have sufficient funds left from your trip? There is a wired money office in almost every airport, but I am not sure if they even stay open till 8 pm.
It is worth a try however before venturing off by cab into an unknown area HOPING money will be waiting for you.
If the airport office is already closed, you may seem to have no choice.
For me, this wired money option would be a LAST resort anyway, not a first one however.
A second option many stranded guests think always works is to have their sponsoring party call the hotel and put the charge on their card.
Or book a reservation through their website and they assume the card used to guarantee the reservation will pay for it also.
Neither of these is true at MOST hotels.
There may be some properties that will but none that I know of.
We certainly won't because the risk is too high that the party may deny the charge at some future point and the Credit Card companies now require authorization from sponsoring parties that allows you to accept their card.
Without it, they usually uphold a disputed charge and the hotel is out of luck.
IF you can find a property that will take a credit card this way would by far be the easiest and perhaps cheapest of any option I could offer.
The exception is if the hotel happens to be a major one that charges double what you might want to pay.
In my experience, it is going to be the less desirable properties needing the business that are willing to take the risk.
And now you have to consider whether you want to stay in such a property to begin with.
If either of these works for you, go for it.
The advantage of receiving wired money is that you can then choose what hotel or motel (cheap or expensive) you want to go to.
Since you most likely are going to be paying this money back, you may not want a room for $179 for only staying 10 hours.
The advantage of calling hotels that will take a card over the phone is convenience and the fact they are open 24 hours, versus closing at 8 pm.
I'll mention just two of them here, as they are the most common options I experience behind the front desk of an airport hotel.
Have money wired: Many stranded passengers ask me if there is a place nearby where they can receive wired money.
This is a popular option it seems, perhaps because this option has been around for ages or perhaps because you no longer have to traipse down to a local office with cash.
You can call from the comfort of your home or office and charge money immediately to a debit or credit card.
There are several reasons why this.
may not work for you however.
Our local 'branch' is in a grocery store about 3/4 of a mile away.
They open at 8 or 9 am and close at 8 pm and my experience is you need at least an hour leeway before money is approved, sent and received.
If it is already past 7 pm then, you probably won't get the money that evening.
Even if you did, how are you going to pay for a cab to get there by 8, unless you have sufficient funds left from your trip? There is a wired money office in almost every airport, but I am not sure if they even stay open till 8 pm.
It is worth a try however before venturing off by cab into an unknown area HOPING money will be waiting for you.
If the airport office is already closed, you may seem to have no choice.
For me, this wired money option would be a LAST resort anyway, not a first one however.
A second option many stranded guests think always works is to have their sponsoring party call the hotel and put the charge on their card.
Or book a reservation through their website and they assume the card used to guarantee the reservation will pay for it also.
Neither of these is true at MOST hotels.
There may be some properties that will but none that I know of.
We certainly won't because the risk is too high that the party may deny the charge at some future point and the Credit Card companies now require authorization from sponsoring parties that allows you to accept their card.
Without it, they usually uphold a disputed charge and the hotel is out of luck.
IF you can find a property that will take a credit card this way would by far be the easiest and perhaps cheapest of any option I could offer.
The exception is if the hotel happens to be a major one that charges double what you might want to pay.
In my experience, it is going to be the less desirable properties needing the business that are willing to take the risk.
And now you have to consider whether you want to stay in such a property to begin with.
If either of these works for you, go for it.
The advantage of receiving wired money is that you can then choose what hotel or motel (cheap or expensive) you want to go to.
Since you most likely are going to be paying this money back, you may not want a room for $179 for only staying 10 hours.
The advantage of calling hotels that will take a card over the phone is convenience and the fact they are open 24 hours, versus closing at 8 pm.
Source...