Sydney, Saturday 11/04/09
Do you plan holidays and accommodation with HotelClub.com? Check out our experience!
To begin with, on 15/12/2008 we accessed the reservation system of HotelClub.com on the internet. We looked up some suitable and nice accommodations on Kangaroo Island. It was quite difficult to find available place due to end-of-year school holidays. But we found Kangaroo Island Seafront Resort . It looked like a fairy-tale place for us. Therefore, we booked us in and paid by our credit card for three nights between 30/12/2008 and 02/01/2009. On the same day the booking was confirmed by HotelClub - e-mail confirmation and voucher for accommodation. And we started to look forward to having beuatiful holidays on Kangaroo Island. In addition, we booked a ferry between Kangaroo Island and Cape Jervis which is a connection between the island and the continent. One way of the ferry was $244 via on-line internet booking. Afterwards, we realized that Kangaroo Island Seafront Resort offers a 10% discount on all ferry bookings for guests in this hotel. So we contacted the Seafront Resort with a request for the discount on the same day 15/12/2008. Two days later (17/12/2008) we got a final response from the Seafront Resort that they had never confirmed our booking saying it was a HotelClub mistake! Furthermore, the HotelClub's reaction came soon. The following day 18/12/2008 we got an e-mail from HotelClub that they had to cancel our booking due to "mis-communication"! No suggestion, no alternatives.... Then they just sent money, we had paid, back to our account. Who knows if we were notified about the booking cancelation if we had not contacted Kangaroo Island Seafront Resort??? And what could we do if we came to the hotel with the voucher not knowing there was no confirmed booking there??? However, HotelClub did nothing to organize an alternate accommodation for us. We just got an apology with HotelClub's hoping that we would book again with HotelClub. We lost four days during those we could have found an alternate accommodation by ourselves. At that time we had the confirmed booking for sea link to Kangaroo Island and no accommodation. We were desparate. We were trying to find accommodation, but everything was hopelessly booked out. We had also booked flight tickets to Melbourne and Adelaide. We had to say big THANK YOU to HotelClub! You helped us and we are loosing money because of your inability to communicate!!! When we asked HotelClub to share or refund our costs, we got no answer. Would you ever travel with a company like HotelClub??? On the other hand, after this experience we tried company wotif.com and we can say that their services are reliable. Written by Ales Welter |
It was coming to the end of the year 2008. I and my girlfriend decided to take our parents, who came to visit us, to Kangaroo Island, SA to celebrate New Year's Eve there. So, we were thinking how to organize our tour. The easiest way seemed to find our accommodation on Kangaroo Island on the internet. We chose a site with a good reputation