Contessa Hotel, San Antonio
I made a booking in May 2018 to stay 2 nights in early December for a suite at the Contessa, San Antonio, via Hotels.com and received a confirmation number along with an American Express guarantee.On arrival, it transpired the booking was not going to be honoured and instead an offer to transfer me to a nearby Hilton was made, albeit for a lesser room. Despite knowing my contact details, the Contessa decided to spring this only upon my arrival, even though 6 months had passed. In the end, an amicable deal was negotiated / struck as to compensation and I stayed at the Hilton without further issue.The Contessa were unable to adequately explain how this problem arose, however the Hilton commented that a lot of Contessa guests had had a similar situation arise and that they believed this was due to an IT issue whereby Contessa’s system was not handling its inventory correctly and that unavailable inventory appeared available to 3rd party partners. So… the morale of this tale is to encourage other bookers out there to contact the Contessa directly, if you believe you have a booking, in order to confirm that your booking will be honoured, otherwise you risk sharing my fate!