Hotwire Hotel: 3* Florence (Central) Hotel La Residenza

[thetraveldiary]

I had booked a nice apartment through Venere but they went and cancelled it (without telling me .. dorks). But I lucked out and found a sweet deal on Hotwire this morning!

The amneties listed were (This is not in the Hotwire list and we may want to add it... I looked all over google and couldn't find this place while searching by the amneties).

Casino

Fitness Center

Restaurant(s)

Complimentary Breakfast

Pool(s)

Tennis Nearbye

The Hotel Details:

Hotel La Residenza

Via Tornabuoni,8

Florence, 50123

Italy

011-39-05-521-8684

Pretty good reviews on Trip Advisor - LINK

My Travel Blog

[thereuare]

Glad you found something to work within your plans.

Thank you for adding this property to our Hotwire Hotel List.

Enjoy your stay.

[thetraveldiary]

At this rate I'll be sleeping in a ditch in Florence. This ones been removed from hotwire now and they cancelled my reservation for September.

[bkushner]

I think hotwire was under contract for this hotel and yourself and should have to compensate you with a room of equal rates. I am in the same boat. Everything nice and cheap is booked for me now.

[thetraveldiary]

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."

[thereuare]

I'm still not clear exactly what happened in this situation, but i doubt HOTWIRE sought this hotel out and offered it on their own.

Somebody selected the amenities to associate with this property and load rates into the system... i doubt it was Hotwire.

So while i don't know who was at fault, it's easy to draw conclusion when you only listen to one side of the story. Hotwire claims the hotel cancelled the contract and existing reservations, the hotel claims they never had a contract... the truth probably lies somewhere inbetween.

[thetraveldiary]

It turns out the Amneties weren't exactly that accurate either. I certainly don't think it was Hotwire to blame either. I talked to Hotwire on the phone today and the rep admitted that there a third party was involved. The person noted that third parties are not unheard of with non-chain Europe hotels. I called my Rome hotel and was talking to the rep there and they said that something similar just happened in Rome with a bunch of local hotels.

I'm certainly intending on still using Hotwire (with your link!) .. I suspect this was just a good lesson in confirming reservations a few days after you make it regardless of how you do it.