Wow, I don't think I've ever dealt with staff this rude. I messaged them on bookings on January 15th to tell them I was coming with my bike for the Ironman in Tours. I never got a response from them and assumed it was going to be fine as I saw a review from 11 months ago, in which a cyclist said she had a great experience with them storing the bike there, so I obviously assumed it was going to be fine - bare in mind I had messaged them 5 months prior to my booking, mentioning me bringing a bike!
When i arrived the lady at reception wasnt mega happy about the bike, but I reassured her I didn't need it in my room as I would leave it at the Ironman over night.
They closed the reception from 11am until 3pm for some reason, which meant I had to come back with my bike to grab my bagpack at 3pm to drop my bike off at the event location.
When I returned, there was a very angry man at reception telling me I cant have the bike here. I explained my situation and told him I had already spoken to his colleague about it and would drop the bike off at the event in a minute. I also said, that if they're so against bikes, they should have firstly responded to my message that I had sent 5 months prior, and secondly, state this on their website. He got very angry and told me that they in fact do have this on their website, but not on bookings.com, which is where I booked. Surely you would assume that if there are rules outside the norm for your hotel, you would make sure that those are stated all over all the booking sites you're using, too.
I then dropped my bike off over night, but felt very unwelcome after the conversation.
The next day I asked if I could leave my bike overnight once I've finished the race, but got told that reception closes again at 8pm, which I tried to be back for, but missed by a couple of minutes. So I ended up having to take my bike into my room. There was nowhere to store it downstairs as they lock all the doors so left me with no option but to take it to the room.
The morning of my departure, I ended up having an argument with the same rude man at reception about the fact that I had to take it upstairs, due to there being no other options. If you regularly close your reception in the middle of the day and at normal times that people would arrive at a hotel, maybe state this on your website. That's not normal in today's world. People can't be given two four hour windows in a day where they can reach the staff. I should have decided against wanting to help a local business and gone with a chain hotel to be honest. At least the staff there is welcoming and is trying to help their customers.
While we were having an argument an other customer walked in and the man pretended to be all nice to me. He clearly knew that his behaviour was out of order.
Firstly, maybe read your bookings.com messages to avoid a situation like this ?!(he claimed he never saw my message, even though he messaged me on Friday about my check in time). I also got told that he "doesn't read the bookings messages".. is that how you run your hotel ? Really ?
Secondly, put information like this on your website and on bookings. I would have never booked this hotel otherwise and avoided all this unnecessary stress.
And lastly, maybe speak nicer to the people staying in your hotel and DONT HOLD THE DOOR SHUT while speaking to a solo traveller. He literally placed himself between me and the only exit there was while shouting at me. Would love to see that CCTV footage if you disagree with me and still think that I was the one out of order.
