Hello from Cork! This post is brought to you by the dude’s nap, since traveling with a toddler changes more than just your packing list. 🙂 We’ve run into a couple hiccups while running around, like our current hotel doesn’t have a fridge in the room – we’re currently storing milk and bottles in the hotel bar’s fridge – but nothing we can’t handle. Of course, the biggest hiccup happened before we even got here…
As I mentioned in this trip planning post, we had booked our hotel in Dublin really early on. It was a great price, especially for a brand new hotel, and we jumped on it as prices skyrocketed around St. Patrick’s Day. We were getting more into the planning process earlier this year when my MIL pointed out that our hotel hadn’t opened yet – Google actually listed it as “temporarily closed.” The Hampton by Hilton Dublin City Centre was set to open in January, but we figured it had been slightly delayed. We didn’t think it would be an issue, since we wouldn’t be there until March.
I ended up calling Hilton in early February to ensure we’d be all set, and they said just the opposite. Our hotel actually wouldn’t be open in time, so now we were a month out, trying to book hotel rooms in Dublin during the busiest time of the year. I was on the phone for hours trying to figure out a solution, as prices were exorbitantly expensive, especially when compared to the rate we had gotten. Hilton confirmed they weren’t able to transfer our reservation to a new hotel, but they would file a case for us with the original hotel to see how they could make it right. In the meantime, I was booking the best reservations I could find still available – at 3x the cost.
No one at the hotel had contacted me prior to discovering this, so it was a crazy situation. Everyone was frustrated, as we had all planned to stay there for at least a few nights, if not the whole time. My mom, who had her own reservation, ended up getting connected with the reservations manager after escalating the issue. This was a game changer, considering my mom wasn’t sure she’d be able to even go to Ireland anymore with the current prices. While Hilton couldn’t transfer our reservation, Hampton could. So the RM got to work, tracking down new hotels for us in the city where we would be able to honor our original pricing.
Fast forward to last week, where we spent our first night in Dublin at the Hilton Garden Inn Dublin Custom House instead. It was a beautiful hotel, with spacious rooms (perfect for the “cot”), and they let us check in when we arrived around 11am, rather than wait. When we make our way back to Dublin, we’ll be joining my mom at her current hotel – which isn’t even a Hilton property. We are so grateful to this reservations manager for fixing the issue when we thought we were SOL.
The big takeaway here? When shit goes wrong, ESCALATE. We had the confirmation numbers to prove the price and dates we’d booked almost a year ago, and we made it clear that the hotel was at fault and needed to find a solution. It may have taken several hours of calls and emails, but it was worth it to not be spending $300+ per night on a tiny hotel kind of close to the city center. We’ll be in the perfect spot when we get in to watch the parade and celebrate St. Paddy’s.