Colleen C.
Yelp
Let's just make it 26 hours, shall we?
25 hours for the hotel name.
+1 hour to actually get a room. (IN A DIFFERENT HOTEL)
Travel weary after a long day of flying, working and dining -- I rolled up to the trendy 25hours hotel ready for some sleeping.
Instead, I was met with a crowded lobby full of sports enthusiasts (near midnight) and a somewhat unapologetic reception guy telling me they'd been overbooked. WHAT?
Let's pause here for a moment -- I do not understand a hotel being overbooked. The number of rooms is static, not variable. Every night they have the same number. They should book this number of guests, no? The reception guy assured me this happens "very often" but in all my travels all over the place the past 7 years, this has not happened to me one time.
However, I get it. Things happen. He told me that they'd pay for my transport to the other hotel and quickly ushered me out to a taxi and gave me a voucher for it. They'd rebook me to the new hotel for my stay. Ok, fine. Let us get on with the show, my sleep time was becoming shorter and shorter.
Please keep in mind at no point did he write down the name of the new hotel, or direct the taxi driver or really help me with anything at all. For a hotel that mega-f'ed up on obverbooking, I'd expect that they'd at least treat this major inconvenience with some grace.
Can you see where this is going?
My taxi driver, who I assumed had been given proper directions to where ever I was to be sleeping that evening -- drove me over to the 25 hours Altona. Which seemed sensible I'd be sent to their other property.
But in fact, after driving 15 minutes and showing up at reception -- they were also overbooked and I was mistakenly driven there by the unsuspecting taxi driver who had not been given directions. Oy vey, 25 hours. Seriously. So now here I am, past midnight at the second hotel of the evening -- with no room at the Inn. Is this a christmas story? I need a manger and a donkey, I don't even care at this point I just want to sleep.
Luckily my taxi driver had to come back in after she dropped me because the voucher hadn't covered the whole journey and she needed some cash. So after forking over 10 euros of my own money to cover the errant journey, I hopped back in the car with her (and another subpar voucher) to go BACK to Hafencity to check into the Hotel Ameron, the correct hotel. I gave her the voucher (15 euro) plus some more of my money to cover the joyride around Hamburg and prayed that this was actually the place I might sleep.
And it was. It's a fine hotel and very nice so that's not really the issue. The 1 star for 25 hours is based on their extremely poor communication, customer service and for overbooking me in the first place. How about this? If someone hasn't checked in yet -- maybe CALL THEM and save them the trouble? Or just don't take too many bookings? Or if you do perhaps handle it like professionals and not like some teenagers at their first job.
Not impressed.