Katharinenhof

After being turned away, finding somewhere to stay that same night was difficult. Luckily, we found the wonderful Garni hotel in Einruhr, which I’d recommend looking at before Katharinenhof. Booking.com later refunded us and stopped further bookings after trying several times to contact the host without success, so they seemed to think they were being ignored. We’d booked one night at Katharinenhof. When we arrived, the owner immediately tried to send us away. We said we had a reservation, and he replied, “you can forget about that.” The hotel had been badly hit by floods and couldn’t host guests. That’s completely understandable, and I feel sorry for everyone affected in the region. But the floods had happened more than a month before our stay, and two weeks before we booked. Nobody told us our stay wasn’t possible. The hotel was still showing rooms available on Booking.com the very day we were turned away. The owner said he couldn’t log in to Booking.com, but I can’t believe there was no way for him to contact them during that whole month, stop bookings temporarily, or notify guests who’d already booked. He also said we could cancel for free until 6 PM, even though we’d already paid, so that wasn’t actually true. I don’t mean to belittle what Katharinenhof and people in the region went through. I hope to support affected businesses there again soon, but I definitely won’t visit Katharinenhof. I think this could easily have been avoided by not accepting bookings more than a month after the floods. I understand emotions were running high, but we didn’t appreciate being made to feel at fault for showing up when there was no way for us to know the hotel couldn’t host us.

The rooms were nice, and the service was good. Breakfast wasn’t huge, but it was decent for what you pay. I’d come back for another holiday!

Yeah.

Really good.