Hotel Curious - Barcelona

[girlscruise2011]

Don't book more than one room of they'll change your reservation and keep your money.

I made reservations at the Hotel Curious for a precruise stay in Barcelona for 2 nights, May 7-8, 2020. At that time, I was told that a credit card was needed to guarantee the reservation, no deposit was necessary and payment would be made upon arrival and that I could cancel the booking until 48 hours before arrival date, without cancellation fees.

I was traveling with friends and had 4 rooms booked total. Now comes January 3, 2020, and I receive an email that if I do not forward them either a wire transfer of cash or authorization form to charge my credit card my reservation would be cancelled since we are a "group". The hotel is small so 4 rooms are considered a group. At this time, hotel rooms in Barcelona are scarce and have become very expensive. Needing 4 rooms together made it even harder. Suddenly since we are a “group” the payment is nonrefundable. Feeling that we had no other option, the authorization forms were emailed to the hotel on February 5, 2020.

After they received my payment, I received email confirmation that the reservation was guaranteed with my card and that I had up to 48 hours before arrival to cancel without cancellation fees. I believed they went back to the original cancellation policy that was stated to me when I booked since they had the payment.Due to the Coronavirus and the lockdown of Spain, I reached out to the Hotel Curious on May 18, 2020 asking if Carnival cancelled the cruise how our soon our refund would be processed. I received a response stating that at the moment they were following the guidelines for the cancellation policies for all May bookings and to try again closer to May to see if the situation has changed. Not knowing yet if the cruise would be cancelled. I didn’t respond.

On March 21, 2020, we finally received the letter from Carnival that our cruise was cancelled. I immediately reached out to all my prepaid vendors telling them of the cancellation and most responded immediately and are processing refunds. Hotel Curious is refusing to refund our money even though they are closed down and the cruise is cancelled. They say I have up to 30 days before to change the date. Change the date 30 days before? IF I ever get to cruise Europe, I'm not going to know that in 2 weeks or if I'll even sail out of Barcelona. I understand that there are hard times there with the lockdown but to keep our money even when they are closed and unable to use the room is robbery. Changing our reservation 3 months before to nonrefundable because we booked 4 rooms is not good business. I would never book a room with them again even if I was going to Barcelona.

Read less