Belvilla

Reference: 1E NH P1 NQ from 3 September 2023

What have made me to write this comment? The worst ever experience with holiday operator – BELVILLA. No holiday/leisure company has ever treated in the way BELVILLA did.
I am frequent traveller, spending 4-5 months a year working remotely from abroad. This time I have chosen Tenerife for my remote office. I have planned to spend 1.5 month over there, moving around the island. I have booked a really nice, spacious apartment with 2 floors with Airbnb. As they offered an early booking discount, the price was quite reasonable. The host – BELVILLA – confirmed my booking and sent me a voucher for my 2 weeks stay. It was 3 September.
10 days later I have received a message on whatsup from the BELVILLA contact person (in line with the data on voucher) that my booking is not valid. The double booking was an alleged reason. No apologize, no solution. I have asked for conclusion. They said they will propose me alternatives. In fact the alternatives, they proposed, were not a reasonable proposals – totally different locations or single room!
I have asked BELVILLA for serious and reasonable proposal from their side. I have not received any. Afterwards BELVILLA totally ignored me not replying on airbnb, messages or even despite promising me contact on review site – trustpilot.com.
As a result I have lost time, energy and money as I have to book different place with much higher price as it was closer to start of my journey. Additionally not much choice of places to stay was left.
Be cautious with BELVILLA. They offers look superb while booking. Later on comes the real (brutal) reality.

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Marcin 7 months ago

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Worst experience ever!

We booked an apartment for 7 persons through Booking.com in a ski area, in Austria . It appeared that the apartment was actually sub-rented by Belvilla by Oyo.

We supposed to check-in on a Saturday afternoon, we arrived at the location after 1600 km driving, but:
- there was no one at the property
- no access code was provided
- the phone number on the booking check-in page was not even dialable!!!!

We started to look for Belvilla customer support numbers but there was only the robot answering with the message that we will be able to talk to someone only on the upcoming Monday, customer service being available only during working days and working hours.

We spent 7 hours trying to reach out to someone from Belvilla to provide us the access code and with Booking.com, trying to find another, more expensive accommodation, in peak season, in a fully booked ski area.

I find it outrageous and in-conceivable for a travel agency, to be in this type of business and not to provide any kind of customer support during the weekends, when by default, people are traveling during the weekends.

This situation incurred significant additional cost for us: we had to pay the tax fee again, a 286 EUR phone invoice (Booking.com support/UK), not to talk about the extra price that we had to pay for the new accommodation. At least Booking.com cancelled the initial reservation without any cost for us.

Belvilla by Oyo didn't even bother to reply when I requested the refund of the tax fee that I paid directly to them. Even during working hours it is impossible to reach them by phone.

This was the worst travel experience ever.

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Silvia Bobariu 2 months ago

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I didn't actually make it as far as reaching the property.

I booked a property on booking.com - a website I have used for many years without any issues. I received a confirmation email from booking.com, and then an email from Belvilla telling me that my payment hadn't been processed, and I would need to follow a link they provided to make payment within 24 hours, otherwise my booking would be cancelled. I was suspicious of this because I have never experienced this before with any other booking I have made through booking.com, but I researched Belvilla online and they had some legitimate, decent reviews, so I decided to try the link anyway and see what it said.

The link did not open anything other than an entirely blank page. The email I had received from them had also provided details to log in to their website, so I tried them - no luck again. I tried emailing them with the email address provided, and using the booking.com messaging system, because I liked the property and needed to finalise the booking. I didn't receive any response other than more emails sending the same non-functioning link - there was no response to the specific question I had, just more generic, automatic emails telling me I needed to pay. By this point I wasn't particularly keen to part with my money but I decided to try ringing them too, using the phone number provided. I tried three times - the first time, nothing happened. The second time, a recorded message played twice and then the line went dead. The third time, the recorded message played twice again and then a lady answered. I explained why I was ringing and she hung up on me.

By this stage I had contacted booking.com and my bank to express my concerns that the booking was not legitimate. I sent a request, via booking.com, to cancel the booking for free even though when I booked it free cancellation was not an option - I felt it was justified, given the confusion and my distrust of the whole process, but was worried that I would be charged regardless. I subsequently received an email from Belvilla telling me that my booking had been cancelled because I hadn't made payment. I was relieved by this but needed to check again with booking.com that I still wouldn't be charged. They have told me that I will NOT be charged, but I will still be checking with my bank, given that booking.com (and presumably Belvilla, by extension) had access to my payment card to make the booking.

I will never go through this process with a Belvilla property again - even if it isn't a scam, it simply isn't worth the hassle! I have booked with a different website and will hopefully still have a good holiday!

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Lizzie 2 months ago

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