I am preparing for our summer vacation, an extended trip to the UK. We only do it every few years, but always look forward to going back reconnecting with friends and family.
We are looking at booking a few days accommodation in various places for in between stays and trips to people and yesterday I found a neat site that you can book rooms in various UK castles, we thought it would be fun and the kids would love it.
One such place was Amberley Castle which we found through one of these booking portals. In my haste to ask about availability and cost I missed the booking criteria – children must be over 12 years old. I thought I would wait for the reply anyway and see when the company Travel Intelligence came back to me if they could suggest alternatives.
Instead I received this reply: "Thank you for your request for Amberley Castle. Unfortunately this hotel does not allow children under 12. If your children are over 12, please email us back, they have rooms available, from standard to Suite."
The assumption immediately was I had not read the booking terms and my children were under 12 – but no other customer focused response. They would have seen from the form I filled out I was enquiring from overseas – that might have meant I was also looking for other accommodation elsewhere during my stay,
I am using the web to ease my planning not complicate things by firing back and forth e-mails and receiving no help – Travel Intelligence is not the only online booking site and at the moment their customer service approach is certainly not intelligent.
When you are dealing on line is your customer service experience as robust as if someone picked up the phone?