As miss7/Daniela Horvat writes on the 9th of August, 2020, the editor-in-chief of the miss7 brand, Tonkica Zlacki, found herself in a rather scandalous situation in Opatija, where she intended to spend a relaxing weekend with her young daughter. She booked accommodation for the pair at the prestigious Imperial Hotel, which turned out to be closed.
The tourist season is in full swing, but the old lady of Croatian tourism, Opatija, can’t boast of the results it enjoyed in previous years. According to local media, tourist workers in Opatija are complaining that this year’s season is “catastrophic” and “twice as bad as last year’s”. Since there is a fierce fight for every guest on the entire Croatian Adriatic, the event that shocked the editor-in-chief of the miss7 brand Tonkica Zlacki is especially surprising.
Namely, in the company of her eight-year-old daughter, she went to Opatija, where she booked accommodation at the prestigious Remisens Premium Heritage Hotel Imperial. It is one of the oldest hotels in Opatija, located along the shoreline not far from the city’s sights, and which boasts the fact that the second hotel built on the Croatian coast. The aforementioned historical hotel is widely known to the people of Opatija and their guests, but Tonkica Zlacki was surprised when she was greeted at the door by an announcement – that the hotel was closed!
“It’s a scam, people are being misled. It’s not sloppiness, it’s a targeted scam to get you there. It’s scandalous,” the editor-in-chief of the miss7 brand stated when discussing the matter. “I chose that hotel, I didn’t want another one. People want to get what they’ve paid for. I wanted to be near the beach I’ve been coming to with my family for years. But that’s not even the crucial part, the crucial thing is that this is what I chose, it was available to be booked, and then I get here to be greeted by a piece of A4 paper stuck on the door saying that it’s closed,” Tonkica stated.
When Tonkica contacted the hotel staff, she revealed that her reservation had been redirected to the Remisens Premium Hotel Ambasador, which is also one of the hotels within the Liburnia Riviera Hotels company.
“They tell you that they transferred you to another hotel on their own initiative, it doesn’t matter what the categorisation is, although that alternative hotel has five stars. I wasn’t interested in it because it’s not in the location I wanted, nor is it a hotel that I chose. If I wanted to stay at that hotel, I’d have booked it,” she said, revealing that at this point, a disillusioned guest has only two things left at their disposal – to accept the offered accommodation or simply look for another.
“It’s completely insane. They’re selling something that doesn’t exist. That’s the main point. As a consumer, you have no control over this process, but they put you in accommodation that suits them and they don’t regulate the price in any way,” Tonkica concluded.
Miss7 decided to check out the whole story and headed to Booking.com where they successfully booked accommodation at the Imperial Hotel for themselves. Furthermore, they decided to check the availability of accommodation in this hotel and on the pages of other online advertisers (RevNGo, Uniline, Agoda) and they succeeded in doing so. Moreover, it was shown that accommodation can also be booked on the official website of Liburnia Riviera Hotels, the group that owns the hotel, which clearly shows that this is not merely an accidental mistake.
In addition, the official website of the group didn’t publish any information on how the aforementioned hotel was closed. Therefore, as a potential guest, miss7 contacted the reservation centre of Liburnia Riviera Hotels which confirmed to us that the Hotel Imperial was closed. When asked how it’s possible to book accommodation in a hotel that is not open at all, the clerk answered with the following: “It’s a decision that has been taken at a higher level. All guests will be moved to Hotel Ambasador. It’s a five star hotel.”
They couldn’t reveal the reasons for the closure of the Imperial Hotel. This scandalous business practice of the Liburnia Riviera hotel group, which holds as many as ten hotels in Opatija, is very difficult to understand. According the information, such methods are not only a consequence of the crisis after the coronavirus epidemic, but such situations have happened before, but out of season. It’s quite shocking that guests who have chosen this facility with their own will and money, will be transferred on the spot by the “take it or leave it” method to another hotel that suits the hotel group the most at that moment. Truly scandalous.
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