For a man from the UK, every holidaymaker’s nightmare has become a reality: his hotel didn’t exist.
Glen Parke traveled to Thailand earlier this year. He wanted to spend 59 days in a hotel. But he quickly discovered that his accommodation didn’t even exist – and his bad luck got even worse. In the end he was 7,000 pounds (around 8,000 euros) in debt, as reported by the Manchester Evening News.
The man landed in Koh Samui on January 1st. “I got off the plane in Thailand and followed the map to where the hotel was supposed to be and it was just a little market stall – it just didn’t exist,” Parke said.
He told Booking.com and he was able to book another hotel. He did that and spent around 3,000 pounds (around 3,500 euros) on it. This time the accommodation actually existed. But when he arrived, the Brit discovered that it was fully booked. He got the money back from Booking.com within a week, writes the “Manchester Evening News”.
He finally found accommodation in the third hotel – for a price of around 3,200 pounds. However, he initially lost his desire for a vacation. “The first few days I wanted to go home. I had enough. Getting the money back from the bill for the third hotel was a real palaver.” There were a few problems: “Booking.com kept demanding changes to the bill before they could pay it out.” He tried for months to get his money back to get back.
Eventually he got the refund. The booking site apologized for the inconvenience and said in a statement: “Following an investigation, we can determine that we did not process the refund for the alternative accommodation booked as quickly as we would have liked.”
The trip itself was good, Parke told the Manchester Evening News. Just initially much more expensive than expected.
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