ryanair.com

Well, where do I start with Ryanair. Last year in december I decided that I was going to go and see Metallica live in London. I had been waiting to see this band for years, and now was my chance, I pulled together all the money I could lay my hands on in order to be able to afford the ticket, the flight and the hotel. So I decided to go to Ryanair.com.

Well, I was online and the website was incredibly easy to use, it did not take me very long to book two flights from Glasgow to London, and I was pleasantly suprised at how cheap they were, I got a return flight for around £20. Bargain is what I thought. And as Ryanair is a non ticket airline, all I needed to do was print out the invoice and vouchers after the booking had went through. Easy! On the day of the flights, everything went smoothly, the flights were on time, the bookings were correct, and the seats on the plane were comfortable. There was no problems with the flights at all. Excellent performance by Ryanair.

Now, here comes the second part. When I had booked the flights, I noticed that Ryanair also offered a Discount Hotels section on their site, this was excellent as it meant that I could book and plan my entire trip on the one website. So, I decided to book myself and a few friends into a really nice 3 star hotel, this was only around £50 per double room, excellent value for money. I put in my card details and booked the room, then after having thought my booking had went through I continued browsing the net, then by luck just before I intended on switching the computer off I decided to check my Ryaniar account booking details, and to my horror I noticed the booking had not went through. So, again I tried to book this hotel, this time the booking had went through but for some reason the price had went up. This did not annoy me too much, I was just glad that it was booked. When it came round to going to london, I got my flights, arrived in london and made my way to where the hotel was using a map (provided by ryanair). I found the hotel and attempted to check in at reception, to my amazement I was told that my booking was not for that hotel at all. The receptionist then informed me that there was another hotel round the corner with a similar name, so I tried there. I discovered that Ryanair had in fact booked me in the other hotel, which would have been fine, if the other hotel had not in fact been less than 1 star, with windows that did not open, room doors which would not lock, dirty bedsheets, no showers, black and white tv with no reception, no toilet roll, drawers missing from bedroom units and holes in the wall. Not to mention the gorgeous view of scaffolding out of my window. Ryanair had shown a picture of the first hotel on their website and actually booked me into an entirely different one.

At the end of the day, Ryanair may be cheap and easy to use, however are you getting what you paid for? I have absolutely no problems with the flights, but how a company can justify what happened to me I just do not know. Think about this, maybe I was only there for one night simply for somewhere to sleep after a concert, however, imagine a family booked into this hotel for a weeks holiday? Would you be happy? As I have only used Ryaniar once, i am saddened by the fact that this was not a good experience, however that is not to mean that this happens all the time. This is just my experience. Lets hope no one else endures it.

I did write to Ryaniar about this incident, and have never heard anything back from them at this present moment in time.