24 Hours Booking - www.bookings-24hours.com Review

Overall Rating

We finally got an alternative accomodation.

Little or no knowledge about their contracted hotels. It usually takes a couple of weeks to receive an answer by email. No compensation for extra costs caused by an over booking (tax, phone calls f r €150) and the first day of the holiday spoiled.

The booking agency 24 Hours Booking has hotels in Greece and some other countries around Greece, but they can not spell the word responsibility and they have little or no knowledge about the hundreds of relatively simple hotels that they have contracted. It's all about making quick money and then forget the customer as soon as possible.

At first the information about the geographical location of the hotel was misleading as the graphical map guide (http://hotels.greece-bookings.com) pointed out totally wrong location. We found this out ourselves having spent several hours trying to find out our hotels actually location and after having talked to the hotel by phone we finally realized that the map information was wrong. After a few days this error was corrected, thanks to our investigation.

We bought a flight chair with the well known charter company Apollo and arrived at Samos airport in time. We took a taxi to the hotel and walked into the reception, a small room of about 4 square meters with an uninterested, smoking woman. She looked at our "guaranteed" reservation and answered "over booked" repeatedly.

Of course we asked how this could be and only got the same answer "over booked". After some arguments she made a call to Athen (the bookings agencys office in Greece) and after a while she said that they had arranged an alternative hotel. We were instructed to walk a few hundreds meters and arriving at the "alternative hotel" we just shook our heads. It was a small room without windows and pool located at the end of a narrow street in a back yard. When asking about breakfast the old lady who was responsible for this "accommodation" just shook her head. We had booked a 2-3 stars hotel with pool and supermarket with breakfast included.

Of course we couldn't accept this "offer". Walking from this "alternative" I collapsed because I hadn't had anything to eat or drink and it was very hot. A nice man who owned a caf helped me up. I told him about our situation and he tried to help us. After having called the booking agency in Athens we got a new offer and was instructed to take a taxi to a new hotel. So we did and after an hour or so we arrived at a small place up in the mountain far from anything... As we wanted a reasonable hotel located in a civilised area we didn't accept this second "offer". We took the taxi back to Pytahorion and the taxi driver decided to drop us off att the local tourist police station. since we by now didn't know where to go.

From here on it got even better... The police men didn't speak a word English although they were "tourist police". I called home and spoke to my husband explaining that we didn't have a hotel room and didn't know what to do. At the same time my youngest daughter was totally upset, crying and shaking. A police man called the booking agency and the Votsalakia Hotel. From these calls we understood that we should blame ourselves for being stupid enough to book Votsalakia Hotel... After some time we finally got a third offer - Arethousa Hotel outside Pythagorion. At 6.30 PM we checked in and were taken care of by a wonderful staff. I can definitely recommend Arethousa Hotel - this saved out journey.

So finally we had a place to spend our week at Samos, but the first day of our holiday was a total disaster. Upon this we spent around €100 extra on taxi and got extra costs for international calls to/from Sweden of about €50.

I have written several letters to the booking agency explaining our experience and letting them suggest some kind of economic compensation. Finally, after some weeks I got a negative answer filled with lies and claiming that we got a better hotel than we had booked and that this apparently should compensate all.

So beware - if you decide to take a flight and book the hotel over the Internet be sure that you check up on the booking agency first as well as the hotel and above all avoid 24 Hours Booking.