In Dec. 2011 we bought a coupon on glamoo.com including a flight from Rome or Milan and a 2-night stay in Berlin in a 3-star roulette hotel with breakfast (whose name would have been communicated upon final booking). After a few days we received the concerned coupon by glamoo.com along with the contact details of their partner, i.e. the tour operator where we could book our flight and hotel according to availability. The given tour operator was viaggiare.it which was definitely difficult to reach by phone; once we succeeded the person in charge first suggested the period from 02 to 04 Feb which we confirmed as possible. It was just after having already communicated flight times and hotel name that he noticed to be wrong as the flight was sold out on that day and asked whether we could travel from 03 to 05 Feb 2012. OK, we were available and the reservation was confirmed. The assigned hotel was Aldea Novum (Bülowstr.). It took just a few days to get our booking confirmation per email, which reported all the relevant data about both our flight and hotel along with an ID booking no.
On 03 Feb we took our flight to Berlin and arrived at the Aldea Novum Hotel in the afternoon. Upon check-in we immediately had trouble with our booking confirmation received by viaggiare.it: the receptionist told us that the hotel management did not have any reservation under our names. After some discussion they discovered that they had got our reservation by Gulliver Travel Associated (presumably a partner of viaggiare.it) but for the period from 02 to 04 Feb 2012! How could it be possible? Our flight had been correctly booked respectively on 03 and 05 Feb… How could we arrive at the hotel on 02 Feb when flying on 03 Feb and conversely fly back on 05 Feb whereas our hotel stay ended on 04 Feb? We felt just like Kafka’s characters in one of his outstanding novels. But unfortunately this was pure reality. We asked to call the concerned tour operator in order to clear the situation; so, the hotel receptionist spoke to an operator who checked our reservation and confirmed the paradoxical data: FIRST arrival at the hotel and THE DAY AFTER flight to the destination where the hotel is located (!), departure from the hotel ONE DAY BEFORE flying back home. Our questions about the absurd contradiction of the data got no answer by the receptionist.
It took more than an hour before she decided to have mercy to us and gave us our room key. We agreed that the hotel management would have definitely cleared the problem the day after by calling Gulliver once again.
After so much trouble we could finally enjoy our room (which was spacious and correctly equipped for a 3-star hotel, though the bathroom is quite small and lacking of a proper lighting for make-up). We were confident that the hotel management and Gulliver would have solved the problem undoubtedly caused by a Gulliver’s operator who had typed the wrong period.
The day after we went out after breakfast in order to visit some must-see places. It was very cold but the sun shined on the German capital fabulously whitened by a thick layer of snow.
When coming back to the hotel in the mid-afternoon we found ourselves wrapped by the sequel of the Kafka’s novel: the receptionist told us that Gulliver had confirmed once again the contradictory periods. We also asked why they did not take into consideration our booking confirmation: the receptionist answered that the tour operator would have never paid them the night 04-05 Feb; so we had to pay – IMMEDIATELY – that night (a night which we had already paid!) or leave the hotel IMMEDIATELY. Really great!
In order to make our decision we asked for the room key so that we could rest for a while and decide about. Sorry: we were not allowed to go up into our room and make use of our luggage unless we first communicated our decision. When asking whether they were aware of the seriousness of their behavior they simply answered that otherwise we could go up, spend that night there and the day after leave the hotel without paying anything.
Do you imagine what we decided? We informed the receptionist that we were leaving in a few minutes the hotel, so we got the key, went up to get our luggage, paid our extra-charges and went away from the worst hotel we had ever run up against and with a temperature of -18° C we searched for another hotel in the neighborhood of the airport.
Our short holiday had been strongly polluted by such a non-professional behavior which was definitely insulting for us. The hotel management of the Aldea Novum Hotel does not show any respect nor confidence for guests even in cases where responsibilities are clear and irrefutable.