Begijnhof Congreshotel - Leuven, Belgium 

After the disastereous experience we had at the Begijnhof Hotel in December of last year (see previous review), and after I wrote an email about it to the hotel management, they offered us a free two night stay in their deluxe suite. Breakfeast was included as well as a dinner in a top class Leuven restaurant. So, fair is fair: they corrected their earlier mistake, as they were treating us like princess. Not that we needed all the attention, just a fair treatment should have been ok, but it was fun. We had a great time, finally got a chance of experiencing the friendliness of the rest of the staff as well as the cleanliness of the hotel. Rooms are rather small, even to European standards, but that's a minor detail. Breakfeast was excellent, location spot on and a nice atmosphere.

We planned to stay at the Begijnhof Congres Hotel, as we speak, today 15 December 2007. So, what went wrong? Well, about everything. I booked a promo they advertise on their website, the so called "VIP SHOP & STAY", € 70 per person en Suite with jacuzzi Package contains: An overnight stay en Suite with jacuzzi Breakfast buffet Free use of sauna and fitness Drink in our bar VIP Invitation Maasmechelen Village We arrived in the hotel at about 3PM today. The man at the reception desk gave us the key to our room, room 115 it was. When we entered the room, it looked very small (not what you should expect of a suite), but mure suprisingly: we couldn't find the jacuzzi. OK, we thought, no problem, they made a mistake. Let's go back downstairs. When we explained our situation to the receptionist that checked us in some minutes before, he got very annoyed. It seemed like he expected the trouble coming up. He said there was no suite available, so he couldn't give it to us. When I asked him why we could book a suite that very same week and now all of a sudden there was nothing available, he started screaming at me that the reservations were not his responsibility and that we shouldn't give him a hard time on this issue. OK, message understood. Next, we asked for a solution. He said there wasn't one and also added that 70 EUR/person was the standard price of a normal room. I said, ok, but that's not what we ordered. We ordered a promo. OK, he said, maybe I can give you a discount of 10 EUR/person. Clearly, that man didn't (or didn't want to) understand our problem. This was us, on our first two days off after the birth of our daughter last october, having stayed the night before in a great resort in Marche-en-Famenne and now coming to Leuven for a relaxing afternoon and (what had to be) a romantic dinner in a nearby restaurant, so we could pick up our daughter the next morning, who stayed at my wife's parents, living close to Leuven. 'Anything else?', he asked. 'A solution', I said. Obviously, no solution. So all we could do, was leaving the hotel and returning, which we did. We had to cancel the restaurant and tomorrow we have to make the trip back to Leuven to pick up our daughter.