The No 1 rated hotel in Paris

I wanted to relate my experience of booking at Jays Hotel which Tripadvisor rates as the No 1 Hotel in Paris.

Tripadvisor took some time before finally replying (below) that this was more suitable for the Forum but I was invited to post my review here.

I personally think that is a pity. An absolutely integral part of the experience of staying at a hotel is how you are able to make arrangements to stay there in the first place, but below is what I wanted to inform those people like myself who value Tripadvisors ratings. Obviously the facts I relate can be verified. (This month is April 09)

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to TripAdvisor. We try our best to limit our review section to first-hand traveller reviews. General commentary, bulletins, or questions for other reviewers, such as your message, may be better suited to the TripAdvisor Forums (http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ForumHome). Forums are discussion boards in which members ask and answer as many travel-related questions as they like and get travel help from fellow members. Please feel free to post your message there instead.

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TripAdvisor Support Team

[112]

------original review-------

Subject: Jays Paris

Location: Paris, Ile-de-France, France, Europe

Title: As the No 1 rated hotel in Paris you should know this

ID#: 28558859

I value the Tripadvisor ratings and on this basis tried to book a suite at Jays for my wife and I for 4 nights this month. Jays were very helpful and we appreciated there may be a problem with the last night- however this was resolved.

The sequence of events then went as follows. The times are complicated by the time difference between the UK and France.

Day 1 - 23.01 email from Jays offering choice of 2 suites for the first three days and another room for the fourth

23.27 - my email reply accepting their offer and choosing the name of one of the suites offered

Day Two - early morning email from Jays confirming my email and saying that I would be rung shortly to make Euro deposit

approx 11.00 - rung by Jays and I make 400 Euro deposit with credit card

11.37 - email from Jays confirming booking, deposit and giving me Confirmation Number

approx 15.00 rung by Jays to say there had been an earlier internet booking and hotel was now full for the first night.

16.18 - email from Jays %26quot;our sincere apologies for our confirming the reservation below which we could not honour...a firm reservation came in at 20h last evening by internet and was pad for and confirmed. Jays does not have the right to refuse at that stage and we have no means of even contacting the client ... on another occassion...we will offer you our rock bottom price....%26quot;

I rang my credit card company who said that the 400 Euro payment had been authorised. I asked Jays to make a refund of this which they did.

I also initially accepted their explanation and told them so but friends have questioned how this could possibly have happened. I have no desire to put this hotel down unnecessarily - it is obviously v highly rated but as someone who values Tripadvisor I have concluded that I should let its readers know - particularly as this is now the No 1 rated hotel in the whole of Paris. I have to make ratings so I have put in top marks rather than anything else which may seem strange but it is bring what happened to us to your attention that matters. It was not a pleasant experience and I felt rejected by it.

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It might be a disappointing experience, but I sense from your comments that their communication and reaction to the duplicate booking was very responsive and timely, and they made an alternate offer and immediately refunded your deposit as requested. The hotel sounds professional and responsible to me.

I wonder if they participate with any of the blind bookings, ex. Priceline... perhaps a situation arose from that sort of prepaid nonrefundable booking that crossed into the timing of your reservation.

Lastly, I have no idea how the rankings work on this site. I put more into the textual information than %26#39;checkboxes%26#39;. Even so, it doesn%26#39;t help when a conflict arises.

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You may well be correct but I hope you appreciated from the timings that the hotel formally confirmed my booking, after taking a deposit, some 16 hours after they said this internet booking had been made.

Note also that some three hours after this internet booking had been made, I was offered a choice of two suites. So the internet booking was for two suites !

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Another thing to keep in mind at least for myself is that just because a hotel is rated as #1 the comments are very subjective. For example, there are hotels that are rated in the 600%26#39;s, for example, and yet are well-favored by quite a few reviewers.

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Removed on: 11:05 pm, May 03, 2009


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The point is, somebody else booked and paid their deposit immediately online, and that wasn%26#39;t evident to the hotel until the following morning. Many of these reservation systems operate through third parties, and I assume there may be a delay in transmitting the info -- or perhaps a hotel employee was slow to pick up on it. In any event, I agree the hotel responded promptly and professionally. It was regrettable, but there wasn%26#39;t much else the hotel could do and they did what they could do immediately.

I don%26#39;t think it makes any difference whether your info was posted under the reviews or right here on the forum. The point is, you have valuable information about booking at this hotel, and you have shared it. Actually, I think it%26#39;s better that it%26#39;s here, because it%26#39;s a lesson to all looking to book top-rated hotels that they need to book early and, when possible, online.

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Thank you for this - it is useful to know that a third party internet booking could come to the awareness of an hotel many hours after it has been made. Your point about booking online is then very relevant and to be borne in mind.

The problem surely is that the internet only deals well with %26quot;standard bookings%26quot; and in this case we needed to deal with the hotel directly for them to accommodate us on our final night (Jays is a small hotel and we were making these bookings 2 weeks before our visit occassioned by an unexpected opportunity to meet up with friends in Paris).

There is quite an irony here in that the personal service we were afforded in making the booking was then %26quot;trumped%26quot; by the impersonal internet from those with whom they apparently could make no contact.I suspect it was the earlier good contact we had had with the hotel that made the final outcome feel such a slap in the face.

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I know what you%26#39;re saying...

not on the same scale by any means, but I was very annoyed once when a Philadelphia hotel could not check me in the first night because some guests had overstayed their booking. So? Why weren%26#39;t they walked elsewhere, they%26#39;re the ones who are not adhering to their reservation agreement - I just arrived, haven%26#39;t done a thing wrong. Stupid policy.

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Travelnutty: I agree with you on guests who overstay. However, at least in this country, I believe there are legal reasons why hotels have to be careful about what they do, and when, to get such people out.