Villa St Maria in Jurmala

DO NOT TRUST, THIEVES They will take money from you anyway they can. Booked to pay in full on arrival to find out they had charged my card anyway. They charged my car without my permission or authorisation which is stealing. Spoke with a russian manager who was absolutely useless.

I stayed in room 25. It was not very clean, the floor was dusty, but that’s not all. Around 10:30 p.m. I found a bug crawling on the bed. As I’m afraid of them, I swiped it on the floor and smashed it. I haven’t seen such bugs before, so I decided to google “bed bugs”. Well it was 100% hit, the one I smashed was bed bug. Some time later another one showed itself on the bed, this time I put a glass on it and called the reception. On my “I have bed bugs in my bed” the girl just said “seriously?!”, very professional huh…

However she provided me another room. While I was packing and moving, another bug went out. Unfortunately, I killed it with a glass when trying to move it to its “friend”… so I left two bugs in a glass on the bed in room 25.
I had to move at 11 p.m. Well, that was not part of my “relaxing weekend” plan in Jurmala. Another room was cleaner and fine in general.

At 11:15 in the morning I went to check out. The receptionist was the same, she just nod at me and took the keys without saying a word. I calmly asked about compensation for the incident. She said she was waiting reply of her management about that and I’d need to wait. I didn’t have much time but waited for about 20 minutes. All this time the receptionist was chatting with the management in messenger, sending pictures of the bugs etc. No offer to resolve the incident or compensate it in any way.

I wanted to resolve the incident in peaceful manner, so politely waited, spoke calmly, but just got neglect from the management. After 30 minutes waiting I asked again. The answer was “They have your phone number, they’ll contact you”. This was very disturbing and disrespectful from hotel side. I asked for a paper and wrote an inquiry for compensation, asked the girl to sign it about receiving the paper. She refused. Thus I was left without any evidence that the hotel is informed about the incident.
This is how this 4* hotel resolves incidents! They totally ignore the customer!
They accommodated me in a disgusting room with blood sucking insects, and then refused even to communicate with me about the incident.

After waiting for 40 (!!!) minutes I didn’t get any news from the management, the girl was still chatting with them. I left.

In about an hour the receptionist called and offered me two options:
1. next weekend at their hotel at their expense.
2. refund in cash at the hotel (however the room was payed by card).
I was already far away in different city and not planning to return, so I demanded the refund to my account. In 5 minutes she called back and confirmed refund via bank transfer.

By the way. When receptionist came to my room at night and saw the “glass hostage”, she just told me how shocked SHE was, that the linen is washed by professional laundry service etc. Not a single “sorry”. She didn’t even manage to apologize in the morning.

I left the hotel on February 27, and didn’t receive money few days later. But on March 3rd the hotel sent me a letter stating that there was an inspection that didn’t find any presence of bed bugs in the hotel and that they refuse me the refund.

Interesting thing. First they ignore the customer, then they promise refund, then they fabricate an inspection and refuse to refund.
I looked through the reviews on Booking. In October one guest mentioned dead beetle all over the room (I enclose screenshot). I bet the dead beetle were the bed bugs after disinsection.

I’d recommend you to think 100 times before booking this hotel. The management chooses avoidance and ignorance in case of incident. Would you like to be treated like that?