Booking a hostel through a third party site cost me 3 hours of my trip

I was in Barcelona last month and booked a room through one of those big booking aggregators. Got to the hostel at 9pm and they had no record of my reservation. Turned out the third party site never actually sent my payment to the hostel. I spent the next 3 hours on a payphone trying to get a refund from the booking site while the front desk lady kept shrugging at me. The booking site said it would take 5-7 business days to sort out. Ended up having to find a last minute room on the fly which cost me double what I planned. Has anyone else had this happen with a specific third party booking site?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_sanchez17d ago

I booked through Hostelworld once in Lisbon and it pulled the same thing on me. Showed up at 10 PM and they had no idea who I was. After that I started only booking directly through the hostel's own website. It's usually the same price or cheaper and you can call them real quick to confirm. Also saves you the headache of dealing with some customer service person who doesn't speak your language. That 3 hour thing sounds brutal though, I only wasted about 45 minutes before I just found another place on Google Maps.

holly_sanchez7517d ago

My buddy had the same thing happen in Barcelona through a booking site. @miles_sanchez you're right about calling to confirm because he showed up at midnight and the hostel was like "we're full, sorry" even though he had a confirmation number. Ended up walking around for over an hour with his big backpack and found a random room above a kebab shop that actually worked out fine. He said the shop owner even gave him a free meal the next morning just for being cool about the whole mess. Now he just calls places direct or uses Google Maps too.