999 Luxury Hotel Nafplio Greece Rip Off

In January 2020 I booked 2 rooms via Hotels.com at a non-refundable rate for May 4, 5 and 6, 2020. Due to the corona situation I contacted the hotel on 4/3/2020 via email and asked if my stay could be rescheduled to October 26, 27 and 28, 2020. I received no response so I contacted Hotels.com. They contacted the hotel for me on 4/25/2020 and replied that the hotel would not accommodate my request. Hotels.com finally offered me a voucher but would only give me one for one room not both. I contacted the hotel via email again on 5/26/2020 and explained that all I was asking was to reschedule but that because they were shut down during the dates of my original booking I had a right to a refund and would pursue one. Again no response. Clearly they just did not care. In contrast, I had booked the Keti Hotel in Santorini for 3 days on May also with a non-refundable booking rate. I contacted them via email to ask for the dates to be rescheduled to October. They did so without hesitation.

Could it be that since they are closed there is no one there to answer your email?

Interesting response to say that I don't have a right to a refund under EU law and that you don't know what the laws are. I have read online that in the EU if a hotel shuts down clients are entitled to refunds regardless, however I have not yet tried to initiate a claim.

The website doesn’t even load any longer. Taking a look at Trip Advisor, it looks like a small local place. They may be closed for good. I’d consider it a sunk cost at this point. Maybe they’ll reopen in the future, maybe someone will buy the property and try to honor previous reservations. But, there’s also a chance the building gets demolished or refurbished and used for something else completely. Or, a new owner takes it over and opens under a new name and starts fresh.

You are one of many who have posted with similar problems. You paid a non-refundable rate, I assume because it was cheaper. Did you then insure for that in case of a loss?

Lucky you. You were offered a voucher for half your loss by hotels.com on a non-refundable purchase. So what’s the problem?
I lost $500 on a non-refundable room in Dubai due to the pandemic—lesson learned. Time to move on. There are bigger problems in the world.

Did you dispute it with the credit card company?

There had not been a review posted of the hotel on Trip Advisor since September 2019, and the last 2 of the 3 were critical of the management. Apparently was not a reputable place even before the shutdown.