We paid up-front to stay here through Hotels.com for 3 nights to celebrate my birthday. After a long 3 and a half hour journey, my fiancée, toddler and I arrived, where owner said that the booking only mentioned 2 adults and was adamant that he wouldn’t allow us to stay due to insurance reasons. We have stayed in many hotels in double rooms without issue, our little girl sleeps in a travel cot or shares our bed.
Now we were 130 miles from home with nowhere to stay, it was almost 7pm and we had a hungry toddler who also needed a nappy change. We asked to use the toilet but were told that they were only in the rooms, but seeing as we had already paid for our room for 3 nights this was outrageous. The owner’s response regarding our money was he wouldn’t give even a partial refund unless he was able to re-sell our room but they were unwilling to cancel our booking, meaning the room would not become available on accommodation listing websites. I’m sure 99% of their bookings come from online sources, so effectively there was next to no chance of us receiving any money back (which turned out to be the case).
During this time, we frantically searched the internet to try to find alternative accommodation, the owner made us feel very unwelcome, asking us to move our bags from the hallway and felt he generally had the attitude that it wasn’t his problem he had our money. Eventually he called and found us a room in a guest house nearby, although it was horrible we were desperate.
