On January 26, 2014, I booked July 22nd and July 23rd at this hotel not long after the Tour de France published its routes for 2014. I knew that Tarbes would fill up on those dates due to the Tour, and I did not want to be forced to find a disgusting dive or sleep in my car. Hotels.com sent me e-mail indicating that my reservation was confirmed, and that all I had to do was show up and enjoy my stay.
It didn’t work that way. The attractive young woman at the desk first claimed that she could not find my reservation. Then, when I produced a copy of the message from Hotels.com, my reservation was miraculously found but I was told that there was a problem with “my room” in that it did not have electricity. That bears a bit of emphasis. Only one room in the hotel -- my room -- did not have electricity.
Oh, and they were fully booked so they already had made me a reservation at another hotel, the Ibis Budget. Interesting that they already had made me a reservation at the Ibis Budget given that they earlier had denied that I even had a reservation at their hotel.
We took the room at the Ibis Budget. We were given “the last available room” at the Ibis Budget. It smelled horribly and the floors were dirty, but we had no choice. It was that or sleep in our car, as Tarbes was just as full as we expected it would be when I reserved these rooms last January.