“The reason i'm writing this review is because i just had a stressful experience with the reservation desk the past few weeks and i think this issue should be escalated to the GM so that it doesnt happen again for future travelers. I booked this hotel for 4 nights via hotels.com and canceled one month BEFORE the deadline. A month ago i realized the hotel still charged me a penalty fee of one night stay directly on my credit card. I spent hours and hours contacting both sides to get this resolved. When i contacted the hotel they told me the cancelation never got to them. When i contacted hotels.com, they maintained that they sent a cancelation request to the hotel and they can't do anything since the hotel charged my credit card directly. The penalty fee was just around 200 euros but it wasted so much of my time to get it fixed. Since the issue was getting nowhere after many weeks, I wrote to both parties together that I really do not have any more time to spend on this so I will have to file a formal consumer complaint and write a review online so that this issue gets escalated to the right people. I wanted to send them an email before i did this out of courtesy before making this public. Hotels.com responded to this in a very professional manner and was very empathetic that i had to deal with this unnecessary stress when this was not my fault at all. They thanked me for contacting them again before filing a formal consumer complaint or writing any negative reviews. After escalating the issue, they refunded the money to me out of their own pocket (even though they maintained that they sent the cancelation request to the hotel) and even issued me a coupon to compensate for this ordeal.Hotel Catalonia Plaza Mayor, on the other hand, responded to me in a very rude manner. The reservation desk stated that "it wasn't their fault", "they did their job well" and "they do not work under threats". Regardless of whos' fault it was, the tone of the email was very disrespectful and is not what i expected from from a 4-star hotel. They called my courtesy email "a threat" and stated that they did their job well. Do they prefer that i make things public before they have a chance to resolve it? I would be very reluctant to book this hotel again in the future as i would be worried about what could happen if something goes wrong (seems like they don't care at all). Anyways, i did get my refund from hotels.com so this is really just a note for the hotel GM to review the way the reservation team responds to emails (regardless who's fault it was ). From a guests' perspective, writing a negative review online or filing a consumer complaint is always a last resort. It only happens when we are 100% sure there is no other way to resolve it so we want the issue to be escalated since we have no other way to report the issue. Wouldn't they rather get a heads up first before seeing the incident posted on the internet so they have a chance to resolve it?”

“Las personas que estaban en recepcion de una calidad humana extraordinaria. Gracias a su ayuda, sus indicaciones y sus consejos conseguimos salir del centro de Madrid y poder retomar nuestra ruta. Un regalo encontrar personas así. Gracias, gracias y gracias.”