Just spent 3 nights at The Guesthouse Vienna in a top floor Duplex Suite with State Opera view. Our first touch point with the hotel was with the hotel driver and I can tell you this wasn’t a pleasant experience and the only reason we’ll never stay here again. We rarely book hotel cars/airport transfers with the hotel because in most cases they’re unnecessary and twice the cost of a regular taxi. However when we fly long haul and don’t want to deal with lining up for taxis and knowing we’ll be zombies after a long flight we sometimes will book the hotel car limousine service. Do not book the Guesthouse Vienna car service.
The driver wasn’t there at the pickup point, called The Guesthouse Vienna for 5 minutes but nobody picked up. After about 15-20 minutes we just decided to leave and get a taxi. On the way out I saw the driver with our sign, I said “where have you been mate, we’ve been waiting for 20 minutes”. His reaction was basically how dare I ask such a question and told me to calm down and then actually had the arrogance to say “I’ve been waiting for you too for 40 minutes. Really? Now to be fair, we later discovered that they had closed the doors to the airport for a while because there was baggage unattended. However, there were other drivers there to pick up people from the same flight (because we asked the drivers waiting), they managed to make it in on time.On the way to the car I just said if you don’t want to take us, we’ll get a taxi, he grunted “do whatever you want, up to you,” . If I was by myself I’d have definitely just got a taxi but my wife was tired and just wanted to get to The Guesthouse Vienna and said let’s just go with him.
We’ve travelled almost every month for the last 3 years, have travelled extensively before that, I’ve worked in the travel business including dealing with hotel associates/staff all around the world and I can tell you this hotel driver is the most rude, aggressive and arrogant hotel employee I’ve ever come across and is the sole reason we’ll never stay here at this hotel again. If he couldn’t get in to the airport, that’s fine, but he could have just said “look really sorry, I understand your frustration but they closed the airport doors etc etc,” but he basically put the blame on us and to suggest we had inconvenienced him for making him wait was pretty poor. To The Guesthouse Vienna GM – so sorry we made your driver wait, next time you can call the airlines and get them to contact the pilot and ask him to fly the plane faster. Sorry to have put your driver out, it was wrong of us to pay almost £600 euros a night and 55 euro for a 25 minute transfer and expect someone would be waiting for us on time and be even mildly pleasant.
Outside of this incident,The Guesthouse Vienna was fine, nothing spectacular, good location, nice breakfast and spacious suite with good view. The bathroom was huge, good shower, and the upper bedroom had a pretty good view. if you just consider the room, the hotel was excellent and because it basically in the heart of Vienna, I don’t think I could have picked a better location for walking around. But sorry, when we get treated like absolute shit for being a little upset because your driver doesn’t show up on time, it doesn’t really leave a good first or last impression.
We won’t be coming back and I don’t recommend staying here in case you come across this absolute a-hole of a driver who’s arrogance and superiority will get you off on the wrong foot. I can be a miserable sod at times but I’ve worked in service positions before and no matter what, I managed to put on a smile and apologise even when thinking the customer is wrong. It’s pretty disappointing to see a so called 5 star hotel hire a driver like this and let them treat guests this poorly. The other The Guesthouse Vienna staff, particularly the front desk staff, were nice and friendly. It’s a nice hotel for sure but for 600 euro a night, I don’t think we should have to put up with the lip and attitude we got from the hotel driver.
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