Bad experience with Venere - who to complain to?

whyone

I would greatly appreciate some help and advice on the following please:

I made a reservation about 4 weeks before travelling for a room at the Be Live Lanzarote Resort through the venere website. Following payment, we received a "Reservation is Confirmed" email from Venere.

Less than 24 hours before departure we received the email stating that "...the hotel is unable to accept the reservation for your upcoming stay. Due to these unforeseen circumstances, we would like to offer you comparable, alternate accommodations.” We were asked to phone one of two numbers (we are based in UK, the numbers were in mainland Europe and US.

I of course dialled the numbers advised in the email only to be twice placed on hold for in excess of 30 minutes before being cut-off on both occasions.

When I did finally get to speak to someone, the young lady, whilst polite, was unable to offer any explanation beyond ‘these things happen’. She advised that we would be switched to another hotel, but was unable to reassure us that it would be similar to the Be Live Lanzarote Resort in terms of location and facilities – she did offer to do a Google search for us to see what she could find out. I was astonished at her lack of preparedness/knowledge and based on this, unwilling to change our reservation.

Instead I phoned the hotel directly and was advised there was no problem with the reservation. We therefore flew to Lanzaraote and headed to the Be Live Lanzarote Resort. Upon arrival we were told there was no room available and we were transferred to the ‘Be Live Grand Teguise Playa’ hotel. We considered this hotel prior to booking, but despite being a less expensive option, we chose the ‘Be Live Lanzarote Resort’ for a number of reasons – including recently refurbished rooms and (at the time) very good guest reviews, despite this extra cost.

The questions I would like some help and advice on are as follows:

1/ Who is responsible for this situation - Be Live Hotels or Venere (Expedia)?

2/ Is it reasonable to expect some form of compensation based on the inconvenience caused / being moved to a lower priced hotel?

Many thanks in advance for your assistance.

Alan_Bowen

You need to look at the terms on line at Venere, most hotel booking sites state that the contract is with the hotel, not them, they just earn a commission for the sale. The likelihood is the hotel got a better offer, possibly from a tour operator and decided to cancel the cheapest bookings. This is one of the major risks of booking through any third part site, hotels are less likely to cancel direct bookings as they think, rightly or wrongly, that you are more likely to be a loyal customer than someone who will go wherever is cheapest. I am not saying that is what you did, but it is a widely held view of a lot of hotels.

A polite email to the hotel is the starting point but ideally you should have got this resolved whilst you were in resort. Good luck