We decided to bokk a self-service apartment for our one week stay in Vienna (partly because of the price/location ratio), but we soon came to regret it. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, well aware that the reception would be closed over the weekend, but we had not anticipated the problems we were going to experience. The hotel had promised to mail us final registration instructions three days before our arrival, but the mail did not arrive until after we had arrived, and because of the trouble in registration we did not find it until the next day! Consequently, we did not know how to open the front door to get in to the registration area, but fortunately another guest let us in. Then the nightmare began: We followed the instructions on the check-in computer, then we filled in the necessary information and managed to get as far as signing, only to receive the following message: ”Your room allotment can not be processed at this time. Please try again later.” This happened three times within the next hour. A friendly guest passing by helped us locarting the emergency service phone number, but after having tried that number three or four times without success (the call was aborted after a few seconds), we were on the verge of giving up. A final attempt was successful, and our German-speaking helper managed to explain our probleø to the help desk person. She tried her best to help us, for the better part of an hour, but without success. Finally, she said that she would call the security company, and they would be there to help us in 20 minutes. After half an hour, we decided that enough was enough, and we decided to check in to a nearby hotel for two nights (until the Smartments reception opened again on Monday), with the clear intention of presenting that hotel bill to Smartments. On Monday morning, we presented ourselves at the Smartments reception and demanded to speak to the manager, who was not present. A meeting was scheduled for the next day. This time, the receptionist helped us check in (not on the faulty computer!)m and we proceeded to our room, which was OK and about what we had expected, except that the coffee maker did not work and there were two non-functioning lamps. We also could not get into the supply room to get extra towels, because our key cards did not work on that door... On Tuesday morning, I had a meeting with the manager. He offered to reimburse us for the hotel costs we had incurred for the two nights we could not get in to Smartments, and to upgrade us for the rest of our stay to their highest category of room (one grade up from our original booking), at no cost to us. This we accepted. I did, however, not find his attitude particularly forthcoming. Being a former travel industry professional myself, I was not impressed by his way of handling the problem. For the rest of our stay, we encountered no further major problems, except that our key cards were still somewhat erratic and did not at all open the supply room doors.
Excellent
76 Reviews