Taormina Casa Turrisi

Jules, sorry this happened. Perhaps when you return from your trip you can try to negotiate with them. I know places are still trying to recover from the pandemic so maybe places are not being as understanding. They are a business.
We were supposed to go to Paris in 2020 and I had pre-purchased tickets to go up in the Montparnasse tower for nighttime views. When that trip didn’t happen, I held onto the tickets knowing we would go as soon as we could. We just returned from that trip. I had emailed Montparnasse tower to ask them if we could use our tickets from 2020. They said no!! However, we took the tickets with us and showed them to the ticket person at the tower and explained, nicely, that we wanted to use them and the guy let us go up! I was very happy, however we also had tickets for a glass of champagne and that gal at the bar did not let us have our champagne. You win some, you lose some. If this is your first travel loss of funds, then you are fortunate.

Tammy, I get what your saying. I’m just so frustrated, we literally spent a whole day of our vacation walking back and forth to the ferry terminal and sent quite a few emails to Casa Turrisi keeping them posted. They didn’t respond to anything but had time to charge our card. That is not hospitality.

Unfortunately, the cut-off for canceling a room reservation in Europe is not often as late as check-in time on the scheduled day of arrival, so even if you hadn't had trouble finding a place to stay in Taormina, you probably would have been on the hook for that night's lodging. It makes me nervous to book rooms that require cancelation farther ahead, because stuff does happen, but often I have to, and it seems to me the cancellation periods have lengthened since 2015.

Since 2016 I've had three days of ferry cancellations in the Channel Islands (had to buy a last-minute plane ticket and take two long bus rides to get to my off-island hotel) and a bus in Catalunya that simply did not show up, leaving me about 50 miles from the hotel where I had a reservation. The planned hotel in Girona did charge me; I counted myself lucky that I found an inexpensive room in the town where I was marooned.

I'm glad you at least ended up with a place to sleep. The one thing about canceled ferries to islands is that if you can't get off the island, the folks who intended to travel there the same day are also stuck, so there's a good chance a room will be available.

I understand your frustration with cancelled ferries. We encountered some of them same situation in Greece but because of a ferry strike. I don’t think I ever considered that we could be “stuck” when we made plans either. I do agree that the hotel should have responded to your messages and expressed their sympathy for your misfortune. However, I don’t think that it is reasonable to expect them to not charge you for the night’s stay as per their cancellation policy to which you agreed.

If you have trip insurance, you might be able to get reimbursed for that night in Taormina. Gather up whatever supporting documents you can in Lipari regarding the ferry cancellations— maybe a note from your hotel there? It’s worth a try.

I’m sorry your time in Lipari ended on this frustrating note. It’s one of my favorite places in Sicily. I hope you can put this behind you and enjoy the rest of your trip.

During the day, I was trying to find out from Casa Turrisi if they were going to charge us. The other folks in our situation were able to cancel their reservations on mainland Sicily. We were trying to decide if we would take the evening ferry if there had been one and then taken 2 trains and walked in the dark in a city we have never visited to get to Casa Turrisi. We didn’t get a response, and they received our emails because midday they charged our AMEX. In the end the evening ferry was canceled anyway.

We have lost our taste for both Lipari and Taormina, we enjoyed many places in Sicily and could have spent more time in those places.

Frustrating, for many reasons, but this is the most we’ve paid for a hotel in Europe and didn’t get to use it.

Just want to chime in and say I'm sorry you were stuck in that situation. I believe, however, that there is an automatic charge of your credit card for the day of arrival, through the hotel's booking site. I don't think someone in registration actually has to log in and initiate. We had something similar happen at the Grand Canyon, and it was completely my fault -- I thought I had canceled the reservation but never received confirmation and didn't follow up.......or I thought about doing it and never did. It was a miserable feeling knowing I paid double for that one night in the park, but I gradually had to let it go.

Jules,
Sometimes our so carefully planned trips face unforeseeable circumstances and in this case it seems like mother nature ruled. I am sure that losing your overnight stay in Taormina is/was frustrating but hopefully it will be your only major setback on this trip. I hope that by now, since three days have passed since your original post, you are off the island of Lipari and happily continuing on your trip. Did you have to skip Taormina altogether or were you able to work in a visit? I tend to believe that, like Massachusetts said in his reply, maybe the charge to your card was an automatically scheduled payment rather than the hotel purposefully ignoring your emails and charging anyway.

With smaller B&Bs I have found that the host/hostess does not always live on site and are just there in the mornings or at a predetermined time to receive a guest. How was your response when you first contacted them? Did they reply promptly before or did you make an online booking? Did they ever reply to you or make further contact? I usually make sure I have a phone with me to make calls when needed. Let me tell you a funny story about a setback I encountered on my last trip to Sicily. My friend and I had returned to our lovely B&B for a late afternoon rest after hours of siteseeing. The owners of our B&B in an old Palazzo in Palermo did not live on the property but rather outside of Palermo in a different town and were usually at the B&B in the mornings. Since we were two women, alone in the property that afternoon, we locked the door to our room while we rested. When it was time to leave to go out and find dinner, my friend went to unlock the door and the big old key broke off in the lock and we were unable to open the door and leave the room. There was no one around and at that time no other guests were at the B&B. I think it only had three rooms for guests, it was not a big place, sort of an old family apartment converted to a B&B. Thank goodness I had a phone to make local calls because I called the owner and he came as soon as he could to “rescue” us.

Anyway, I hope everything else went well and look forward to hearing about your trip and learning any insights and tips that you will be able to share based on your trip experience.

As was said previously, it may have been an automatic charge and they didnt see your emails. If you look closely at your AMEX account, I'll wager the charge is in the "pending" section. The hotel preauthorized the amount and will process it the next day.

If you have problems on the day of arrival, it is best to call the hotel rather than send an email.

I had a fair amount of contact with Casa Turrisi including confirming our stay a couple days before arrival. I’m not sure about the automatic charge. It even occurred prior to checkin time, which I think is a bit odd even if we had been able to stay. It would have been nice had they responded to my inquiries during the day. I got this property from the RS guide. I very much prefer small, family owned properties. I have since found out that Casa Turrisi is a part of a larger organization. In fact, she stated, that it was because of the larger organization that she couldn’t wave the charge. Absolutely everyone else in our situation (which we got to know pretty well during the day) was able to get their hotels canceled.

My husband tends to be quite passive and rarely gets angry, was pretty steamed over all this. I wanted to be able to enjoy breakfast on the terrace in Lipari the day we were leaving but he just wanted to be done and move on so we were on the 7am ferry with a prepackaged breakfast and instant coffee.

We ended up pretty much missing Taormina other than the transfer from a train to bus. We wanted to see the theatre and take the gondola down to the beach.

We have moved on the best we can in spite of really lousy weather. We didn’t pack for rain and 55 degrees. We are staying in a wonderful, family owned agritorismo in Randazzo. We have been wine tasting and sight seeing with an attentive local guy who is just starting out in this business.

If we hadn’t flown past it on our arrival to Catania, I wouldn’t believe Mt Etna exists. We haven’t seen it.

The AMEX was charged, I get notification of every foreign transaction when it occurs.

I do not have cell service in Italy. Most of the smaller, independent properties in Sicily use WhatsApp which has been working well.

Hello Jules, sorry about your misfortune. I have lost about $2000 in travel costs for late cancellations outside of my control during the pandemic so can sympathize. But I would like to know the name of the Agriturismo you are enjoying since we are planning a similar itinerary to yours for June.

Heather, sorry I do t have much time but I wanted to quickly say, we stayed at Parcostatella, it is in the RS guide, everything about it was terrific, the grounds beautiful, the staff, especially Miriam were beyond helpful. Their restaurant is reasonable and quite good. They connected me with Alfio who drove us around. He was excellent as well.