Review-Stuff

This Hotels-in-Vietnam online booking service review was inspired by my recent trip to Hanoi in Northern Vietnam. Before I traveled to Vietnam I got online and looked for accommodation I could reserve over the internet. I noticed the website hotels-in-vietnam seemed to have quite a number of hotels available in Hanoi and in the old quarter area of Hanoi where I wanted to stay in so I decided to book one of their hotels through their online booking service. I booked a room at the Prince Hotel Hanoi for a few nights and promptly got a reply back from hotels-in-vietnam confirming they had a room available at my choice of hotel on those dates. 

The Prince Hotel in Hanoi provided a free pick up service and transfer from the airport to the hotel. On arrival at Hanoi International airport I looked around for my free taxi pick up service as I exited the arrival gate but there was no one there. I decided to call the hotel but could not get any connection to this hotel, all I heard was a recorded message in Vietnamese. I decided to ask someone at the information booth if she could call the number for me and she happily obliged. She than responded telling me this hotel had closed down. At this point I really wasn’t sure what to do as I had no other numbers for the hotels-in-vietnam reservation service.

I waited around for about half an hour till finally I saw a guy frantically running through the airport looking around and wondered if this was my driver. It was but he couldn’t speak any English so I don’t know what he said to me. We took the 45 minute drive into Hanoi and he pulled up outside a hotel that was not the Prince Hotel I had booked and gestured for me to get out of the car than demanded money. It was a free transfer to the hotel but this was clearly not the hotel I had booked so I didn’t get out of the car. He screamed and yelled at me in Vietnamese, I’ve been living in Asia for a couple of years so this didn’t really bother me.

Finally someone from the hotels-in-vietnam company came out and knew who I was. He was quite polite and asked if I would come inside. He proceeded to tell me that all the rooms at the Prince Hotel were booked and that he was trying to locate another room for me. It was quite late at night and I was not liking the sound of this at all. At this stage another guest of the hotel came and asked me if I had booked another hotel and they had brought me here. Yes I replied, how did you know that I asked. He said the same thing happened to him. As it turned out, on the hotels-in-vietnam website they have numerous hotels to choose from but a number of them have closed down or are under renovation. The hotel I had booked was not full like the manager had told me, it had it fact shut down for renovation.

They finally found me a room at another hotel which was of about the same standard as the hotel I had booked. The next morning I went down for the free breakfast but was told they had no food left. I explained that breakfast was supposed to be served for another 2 hours and where was the food? He said we ran out of food you will have to eat elsewhere. I went back out to reception and the manager told me they will go and get me some food if I wait. Almost an hour later the guy comes back with one bread roll and a single serving of jam. So much for the free breakfast. Every morning the breakfast situation was the same and every morning disgruntled guest were complaining that they had paid for a room with a free breakfast but they continue to say they have no food. It was really pathetic.

After getting up for some early morning day trips, one morning I wanted to sleep in but was repeatedly annoyed by the room cleaning staff banging on the door from 9am. I asked them if they could come back in a couple of hours but they continued to persist banging on the door every ten minutes.

It was cold at the time of year I was in Hanoi so a warm shower in the morning was essential. However the hot water lasted for about 30 seconds and then took a couple of hours to warm up again. So my girlfriend and I had to each have lightening fast showers for just a few seconds before we completely ran out of hot water.

The manager of the hotel was a generally friendly guy who could speak English quite well but the service and organization of the hotels-in-vietnam reservation service was extremely disappointing and I would never use, nor recommend the hotels-in-vietnam online booking service ever again.

Hotels-In-Vietnam review-stuff.com rating 4 out of 10.