Dear Mrs. Holly Kempner,
Thank you for sharing your experience in Hotel Santa Justa, we appreciate your feedback and we’re glad that you enjoyed your room and the breakfast buffet. However, we’re sorry that your experience here wasn’t as good as it should have been, and we’d like to review the downsides you pointed out.
We are in a privileged area on the heart of Lisbon Downtown where all the buildings need to correspond to certain architecture rules and that is why all buildings in this area have the same height. Unfortunately, as you may understand, we cannot control how our neighbors use their balconies, nor the restaurants in the street. In the typical neighborhoods, this is actually a common practice between the people: hanging out clothes on the balconies, talking to each other outside…this is the soul of Lisbon.
As for the minibar issue, apparently the housekeeping missed the empty bottle when verifying the room. We understand that this not acceptable and we’d like to apologize for that.
Finally, we would like to clarify that the hotel has a price policy that works just like the law of supply and demand. The prices are adjusted according to the hotel’s availability, so you may notice some price disparity. If, for example, you book a flight today, the price of the same flight tomorrow may be much more expensive or much cheaper, and the same thing happens at the hotel.
To safeguard these price disparities, we offer two booking options - refundable or non-refundable. The refundable rate allows you to book your room with the possibility of modifying your reservation or even canceling it up to 24 hours in advance and is therefore a bit more expensive. On the other hand, by booking the non-refundable rate, you agree to the price you are paying, and agree that you will not be able to make changes or cancel your reservation for free. In addition, the hotel is committed to always showing the best available price compared to other booking sites. This means that when you made your reservation, we gave you the best price available at that time.
Still, since you have expressed your discontent with our pricing policy, we have reviewed the situation with our revenue & pricing manager, and we refunded you the money you paid “extra” for both your reservations.
Kind regards from Lisbon,
Hotel Santa Justa Team