Gala Hotels Beware

hduthie · 14 June 2018 at 3:42PM

[FONT=&quot]On 6 June 18, I received an email confirmatition from GalaHotels.com confirming a booking at the Hallmark Hotel, Glasgow and providing access arrangements for the relevant voucher. My credit card was debited with £127 that day. Later that evening, Gala advised the booking was cancelled as the hotel had overbooked. Gala have refused to honour their terms and conditions where they undertake to "offer an alternative hotel of the same or higher standard in the same destination".Gala's Customer Representatives have not responded to follow up emails. Yesterday, 13th June the person I spoke to said she was transferring my telephone call but routed it to an answering service. I left a message which has not been returned. This afternoon, despite several attempts, it has not been possible to speak to anyone on their bookings customer line. :mad::mad::mad:
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[FONT=&quot]Gala's head office is in Istanbul, Turkey.[/FONT]

LadyDee · 24 June 2018 at 1:43PM

I think this must be one case that you should take up directly with your credit card provider, as there is obviously nothing else you can try.

stuart_a_m_traill · 22 January 2019 at 5:03PM

galahotels.com IS A SCAM! I booked a week's hotel accommodation with then for the Westgate Lakes Resort in Orlando (Jan 6-13, 2019). The cost was £388.00 for the room only. They took my money, confirmed the booking and around 2 weeks prior to my departure cancelled the booking with the hotel (without my consent or knowledge). NONE of the telephone numbers I tried connected with ANYONE! All my emails generate ZERO response from them.

In case I wasn't clear: GALAHOTELS.COM IS A SCAM - DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

JustinRC · 6 February 2019 at 2:13PM

I agree it is a scam and their website is still up and running and taking bookings.

The way it works is that they take your money and make the booking through an intermediary hotelbeds.com but they never forward payment to Hotel Beds who then cancel the reservation a few weeks after the reservation has been made. So if you call the hotel before the reservation is cancelled they will confirm your reservation. Not that I did this I just turned up expecting everything was ok!

You get no response trying to contact Gala Hotels or Leonardo travel. Hotel Beds (the intermediary) cite Leonardo Travel as being the clients (me) travel agent who had not paid them in their email to the hotel cancelling the reservation. I do wonder if there is a case that the intermediary is acting as an agent for Gala Hotels. Does anyone know? Could I make a claim against them? I have tried emailing them as well.

I have also reported Gala Hotels to the National Fraud and Cyber Crime Reporting Centre who take reports on behalf of the UK police. First of all they won't log it as a crime since I am still in the process of trying to get my money back through chargeback, but they also tell me I am the only person who has logged a complaint against this company. Which seems bizarre when you see the pages of complaints on trip advisor. Apperently they will act if they receive a number of complaints but for now my report is just logged for information.

*** So please if anyone in the uk has comes to this page having been scammed by Gala Hotels, Leonardo Travel or Vanilla Tours (they are all the same co.) please report them to actionfraud.police.uk. ***

Gala Hotels Beware

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