City Palace Hotel

We booked a room at City Palace Hotel through Agoda, but when we arrived, we were told it was overbooked and that we’d be moved to Tahrir View Hotel, owned by the same owner, a few minutes’ walk away. It seems they own four or five hotels in the area. From other reviews, this kind of transfer appears to happen regularly. We weren’t opposed to changing hotels, but the way they communicated with us was infuriating and upsetting. Since we couldn’t stay where we’d booked, we asked for compensation. When I asked for a lower price, they said we’d need to cancel the original reservation and make a new booking at the other hotel to get a discount. But by then it was the day of arrival, so Agoda, like other booking services, charged a 50% cancellation fee. We couldn’t cancel it ourselves. The owner was called and came to “help,” offering to contact someone to cancel without a fee. They’d already told us so many contradictory things that we didn’t trust that this would actually happen, so we kept asking for a discount on the original price, the only reasonable compensation we could see. The owner didn’t seem to listen. He repeated himself, sometimes contradicting what he’d said before, and didn’t seem sorry or apologize for the inconvenience. It might have been manageable if they had tried to help and shown real regret about the overbooking, which was clearly their fault. It felt like they did this on purpose and didn’t care about their guests. They even seemed to enjoy arguing with us and made stupid jokes now and then. In the end, we accepted the other hotel at the same price because it was already past 10 p.m. and we were tired of walking and arguing. If you just want a cheap place and don’t care much about the people or hospitality, I can recommend this hotel. But if you expect even a little kindness beyond the shallow appearance, I’d avoid the hotels owned by this owner: City Palace Hotel, Tahrir View Hotel, and Panorama New City Hotel. Those are the ones I know for sure he owns.