1/10 Rating
The worst Booking.com stay I have ever had: dozens of roach-like bugs throughout the apartment, almost no sleep, our wed
Likes: At first, the apartment made a good impression. The price was lower than average, so I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived. The apartment looked nice, was spacious, and overall seemed like a very good value for the price. It was a little worn in some areas, but nothing that bothered us at first.
Dislikes: Unfortunately, the night completely changed our opinion.
I woke up in the middle of the night and found a large cockroach in the bathroom. I killed it and initially thought it might just be one random bug. But right after that, several smaller roaches came out from underneath the baseboards and started running around.
When I returned to the bedroom and turned on the light, I realized there were many more of them. Small roaches of different sizes were crawling in the bedroom, bathroom, living area, near the kitchen, around and behind the sofa, and across the floor. The bedroom had dark carpet, so they were hard to notice at first, but once the lights were on, we could clearly see them moving through it.
They even got inside our open suitcase that had been sitting on the floor.
At around 3 AM, I had to wake up my wife, and we spent about an hour trying to kill them. I personally killed probably 50–60 small bugs of different sizes. We were afraid they could crawl into the bed or further into our luggage.
We barely slept afterward and kept the lights on because we felt extremely uncomfortable and unsafe.
This trip was also for our wedding anniversary, so the situation completely ruined what was supposed to be a nice trip together.
We contacted the property during the night, and they did respond relatively quickly. Later, we were told that these were supposedly “palmetto bugs” rather than cockroaches. But honestly, whatever they are called, guests should not have dozens of bugs crawling throughout the apartment, in the carpet, around the furniture, and inside their luggage.
What made the situation even worse was the support from Booking.com. I am a Genius Level 3 customer and Booking.com advertises priority VIP support. However, I received almost no actual support.
I contacted Booking.com through the app and received mostly automated responses. Later, a Booking.com representative named Elizabeth emailed me and asked for information that I had already provided.