We booked a double room online. However, upon arrival, the woman at the front desk informed us that because of an error on the hotel's part, they had only reserved a single room for us. Properly scheduling rooms is an incredibly simple, but highly important task. Whoever is in charge of this job at Hotel Gambetta must be an extremely incompetent person. It is really not that hard to make sure people get the room they request, especially given modern technology.
Hotel Gambetta did not have any other double rooms available for that night (we were staying three nights total), so the woman at the front desk called around to find us another hotel. She pointed out its location on a map. The hotel she located was much further away, in a much worse area (we later walked by the hotel). I refused to go to that hotel instead, so my wife and I had to share a single room for one night until a double would become available (which meant I had to sleep on the floor).
My understanding from my conversation with the hotel employee is that we would receive free breakfast + the price difference between a single and double room. That is the MINIMUM offer that any high quality service-oriented company that cared more about its reputation than skimping its customers would offer. However, upon not seeing any kind of refund made to my credit card, I contacted the hotel. The manager of the hotel informed me that they thought free breakfast was sufficient. Honestly, a hotel that cared about its customers (and not getting reamed on tripadvisor) would have given us the night in the single free, in addition to free breakfast. I would have even been satisfied with the 10 euro price difference between the single and the double. It is unacceptable to make such a big mistake on such a simple task.
So in summary, don't go to Hotel Gambetta because they cannot be trusted to handle simple tasks competently.
In fairness, the woman working the front desk when we arrived did an excellent job in apologizing for her hotel's error and trying to improve the situation (even though one of her proposals was to send us to a dumpy hotel). Additionally, her english was excellent, which really helped as well.
- Gambetta Hotel Bordeaux
