Holiday Horror Stories
As we are now back in the office with the memory of our holiday quickly replaced by deadlines, emails and phone calls, some of you have had a leisurely and relaxing holiday, whilst others might have had to deal with the stress of driving coast to coast, feeling the threat of airline strikes & baggage handlers or what you thought you paid for you didn’t get be it a hotel room, package deal, tour or the like!
At HotelClub, we pride ourselves on listening to our customers and providing ways for them to rate their hotel stay. Every customer who makes a booking with HotelClub receives an email (within 72 hours of checking out of the booked hotel) that asks them to rate their hotel stay on 5 key criteria of location, cleanliness, facilities, pricing, and service. The hotel is then given a score out of 5 and the reviews (both good and bad) displayed on their page.
Here are just some of the hotel horrors we found……
“There was maintenance work going on in the hotel during the morning hours and incessant hammering woke us up. Would probably not stay there again!”
“Unfortunately, our one bedroom apartment was a huge disappointment. The hotel clerk assured us the hotel was rated at 3.5 stars, but that was obviously not the case for us.”
“Adversely, the whole purpose of renting this room was to have a place to leave our valuables and feel safe. Further please be advised that because of the condition of the hotel, we did not stay the evening of check in.”
“We were badly eaten by bed bugs! The hotel needs a lot of work, carpet dirty, walls need painting, everything is quite old, we would not stay there again.”
“The room was not only dirty but was cold and was right next to the elevator. You can imagine the noise that came from that. There was also the sound of pouring water which was so loud we kept thinking it was in our room. We felt unsafe, uncomfortable, cold and had the worst night sleep ever.”
“I am absolutely disgusted with the hotel - it was awful in every way and by far the worst hotel I have ever had the misfortune of staying in.”
By providing our customers with great hotels at great rates, HotelClub has been able to keep customers’ complaints to less than 0.4% of total bookings – with all rates backed by a Low Rates Guarantee^. Whilst keeping these ideals, occasionally circumstances are beyond the control of HotelClub such as maintenance!
We would love to know if you have a holiday horror story - Leave a comment and tell us about your hotel nightmare experiences.
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January 22nd, 2008 at 4:55 am
Last year I went to a conference in the US (San Jose), leaving from Sydney Australia. It didn’t go well..
It all started off so well. Both my work mate and I managed to get exit row seats so there was plenty of leg room. Then things changed.
The engines roared and we started heading down the runway only to have the engines die down. They kept us waiting in the plane while they tried to fix the problem, but after an hour they let us loose on the terminal.
After 3 meals, kilometers of walking, hundreds of pages read and 8 hours we made our second attempt at taking off. Thankfully this time we got in to the air, even though we could have been almost there by now.
We waited for ages for our bags to arrive, then we stood in a short line for 50 minutes while they tried to reallocate connecting flights.
Finally we were confirmed on a flight, on a plane that I could not stand straight in.
Once in San Jose, we rented a convertible Mustang (Got to roll in style) and looked up our hotel in the GPS. We couldn’t find the hotel, or the road. So we drove to a possible location, which wasn’t it, so we asked directions to the general area we wanted to go. The directions didn’t help, but we finally got to the Marriott Hotel San Jose a few minutes before midnight.
A little after midnight we tried to check in but there was a slight problem. The hotel didn’t have our reservation and the address on our form didn’t match the address of the hotel. They called central reservation and couldn’t find our names.
Strange seeing as we booked the Marriott Hotel San Jose and that’s just where we were… Oh wait, the travel agent booked us in to the Marriott Hotel San Jose, Costa Rica.
Costa Rica?!
COSTA RICA?!
We are in America! I told the girl doing the reservation for us we were going to the States and the other guy even sent a link to the hotel to her!
Costa Rica?!
Thankfully they put us up for the night, but were booked out for the rest of the week (Like most hotels here), so we spent some time on the phone to work trying to get something else. Eventually finding a nice little dodgy place.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
After looking forward to my cousin’s wedding for nearly a year, I booked myself into a well known hotel in Sydney thinking it was not only well located…but pretty much at the top of the tree as far as Sydney hotels go.
How one can be wrong!
Drove up the driveway at 3:00pm…but didn’t get my bags onto a concierge cart for 15 minutes…and then had to do it myself. I think that a 5 star hotel with only one driveway attendant is kidding itself. But that was only the start!
Then it came to check in…. wait in line for the single front desk clerk to become available (while the other was sitting on the lounges chatting to a friend. 3:40pm at the desk…nearly there I think….well…maybe not…..
“Sorry,but I don;t have a room available…but if you can wait on the lounge it wont be long”
At 4pm it became a joke…at 4:15 it was past being funny.
Anyway…we finally got into our room at 4:40pm….1 hour and 40 minutes after arriving..and the bags took the bell boy another 30 minutes.
We were late for the wedding and the hotel didn’t care AT ALL.
I suggest that you NEVER stay at this hotel…it’s CRAP.