Problem with Travel Republic and Lowcostbeds

cjalynch

Hoping someone can advise-

Last night we booked a ten night stay in a hotel in Naxos through TravelRepublic and received an accommodation voucher by email for lowcostbeds (travelrepublic acting as their agent).
This afternoon I emailed the hotel to introduce myself and say how excited we were to be coming and have received a reply saying there is no booking and the hotel is fully booked for that period. Went online to look at reviews of lowcostbeds and am totally appalled to see other people's experiences of this company and their frankly fraudulent practices.
Travel Republic is closed for the night and I will call them at 8am. I tried to send a request to cancel the booking but there was a fault with their system (I have saved screenshots of the attempt)
Does anyone have any experience of this kind of situation and can advise what is likely to happen? There are not many hotels in the area we want to stay and no others with a pool so what are they likely to offer us?

Many thanks in advance for any help that can be given.

CG19a

I might be wrong here - but sometimes travel agents block book a certain number of hotel rooms, hence why the hotel is "full" and then supply the names of the guests later. It may just be that if you were to book through the hotel at the moment then all it's rooms are sold out, but lowcostbeds have some rooms that they've already paid for that they will allocate to yourself.

Saint_Chris

CG19a is correct, bed bookers block book hotel rooms, we have in the past, contacted hotels prior to our visits only to be told that they do not have the name of people who are booked in yet, and to contact them back a week before.




Why have you tried to cancel the booking before speaking to anyone?
It was 12 hours after booking the hotel, you contacted them to introduce yourself, and you are surprised that they do not have your name. Sometimes it takes a bit of time for name of bookings to be passed on.
Nothing wrong with lowcostbeds we've just used them for our visit to berlin, booked, printed our accommodation voucher off, contacted the hotel 4 days prior to arriving and asked them for a high floor, upon arrival we got what we requested.

cjalynch

Thank you for the replies- I am just very concerned about this. It is a small hotel with only 20 rooms and the owner seemed very sure that we would not have been able to book a room as he his full on the dates we require. There are many similar stories on here:

http://www.reviewcentre.com/r168828_2_Low_Cost_Beds_wwwlowcostbedsco.html

I posted yesterday as I need to deal with this quickly (due to leave on the 26th) and wondered if anyone has any experience of this type of thing, where I stand if they offer me alternative unsuitable accommodation and what to expect from the travel companies. Thanks again for replying.

Saint_Chris

I would just wait till travelrepublic open, then ring them and see what they say.
020 8974 7200


Tell them your worried and why and see what they say, if they say that your booking is fine and there is no problem, whatsoever, ask whoever you are speaking to send you a e-mail confirming this, whilst you are on the phone, and don't put the phone down until you receive this e-mail.


If it is ok and valid, then it is up to you, you either continue with the booking and arrive at the hotel, or you cancel.
But if it was me and they say the booking is fine I would be going ahead with it.


good luck and let us know how you get on.

tamiami

Bed banks only usually have block bookings on large hotels, I can't see them having a block on a hotel with 20 rooms though I could be wrong. Knowing lowcostbeds you'll probably get an email a few days before travel saying your hotel has changed, as they are known for overselling and then switching your hotel. Definitely call Travel Republic though they will then have to call lcb to check it is a definite booking.

lea2012

Low cost beds don't usually contract rooms direct from the hotel.
What will have happened is that you have paid TR who have bought a room from LCB who in turn will have booked through another bed bank who have a direct contract with the hotel. (confused yet?!)
Chances are that there are at least three sales points after the hotel so it's unlikely that your reservation will have even got to the hotel yet!

The end supplier will likely be a local company based in Greece who has prebooked a certain number of rooms and who then sells it on to the bed banks. That will explain why the hotel do not know you are or even who LCH or TR are.

This is quite common and I would imagine your booking is fine but it's better to speak to Travel Republic this morning and just ask them to chase it up and confirm all is ok.

Saint_Chris

tamiami wrote: »

Bed banks only usually have block bookings on large hotels, I can't see them having a block on a hotel with 20 rooms though I could be wrong. Knowing lowcostbeds you'll probably get an email a few days before travel saying your hotel has changed, as they are known for overselling and then switching your hotel. Definitely call Travel Republic though they will then have to call lcb to check it is a definite booking.

My friend had a small complex in turkey with 15 rooms and bed banks used him.
His complex was advertised on lowcost/alpha/travelrepublic.


This year we booked through sunshine.co.uk room only in turkey, they used bed brokers, for our booking, which went bust earlier on this year, they just re-booked our accommodation with another bed broker.................confused we was at the time......lol.


We are only going in sept, and I've contacted our friends in turkey at the complex and told them that we are booked in, and if possible, we want the same room that we had last year, they have a list of bookings and how many people are booked in, but not the names to go with them at the moment, I don't know when they get the names, but were due to fly in sept, and we booked our room in January.

cjalynch

Thank you all for comments- we have contacted TravelRepublic who have asked us to authorise early release of our names to the provider. I have a request now attached to the booking on their site and have added a note to request urgent attention to the matter. Will let you know how we get on. I have also re-emailed the hotel to see if any of it makes sense to them and to get a clearer picture of their capacity and how their bookings/names on bookings work. Still quite concerned and hoping to get a resolution today.

Saint_Chris

<<we have contacted TravelRepublic who have asked us to authorise early release of our names to the provider>>


well to be fair they have confirmed what we all said, that names would not be released yet, there still in the chain...so to speak.


Maybe try asking the hotel do they have a list of names of rooms booked for the dates that you are going?
If they say no and they just have bookings for the rooms it would then seem everything would be ok.


I will message my friend in turkey and ask him, when does he get the name of people who are due to arrive at his apts, we go in 8 week and he's not got ours yet, not sure how long it will take for him to get back to me.

cjalynch

I have emailed the hotel this morning to see if they can clarify bookings/names for me. I was really freaked out by some of the reviews at the linked site above and am keen to get an answer so we can sort something else out if there really is not a room. The place we are booking is quite a small village so there is not a lot of choice in accommodation and this was really the only option with a pool. The request still has not been allocated on TravelRepublic.