I recently had a fairly last minute cancellation of my hotel stay in Florence through Hotwire. I contacted the hotel directly to see if they would honour the rate and to my suprise found out they had never made a relationship with hotwire but rather some third party did, in which they were not getting paid at all, and people showed up last week and had no rooms! Well I wanted to warn people to check their hotwire reservations. Who would of thought they would of allowed third parties to set these things up.. I'm still going to be a hotwire user but I guess I'll just consider the confirmation an extra necessary step! Here's a clip from the email from the hotel directly: "The problem is that we [did not] have any agreement with the company "Hotwire": it was unknown untill past week when, suddenly, some guests arrived here with unexpected reservations. We can not accept vouchers (on line vouchers above all) illegally issued by unknown companies. For these reasons, we suggest you to cancell as soon as possible your reservation with Hotwire and find another way to come to Florence. For your complete information: our rate for a double room with bath in the period Sep 13 - Sep 17 is Eur 170.00 p/day including buffet breakfast."
