Hanalei Bay Resort BaliHi

The hotel itself was great.

The room belongs to a private host who doesn't know how to handle payments. My payment went to a "Therapy" business, and the host claimed to not recognize the transaction despite admitting to being a therapist. I was notified of this problem on the day of the check-in, the host handled this extremely unprofessionally, threatening to deny the check-in unless I paid "immediately" via Venmo and claiming that I was scammed. Booking.com was not helpful at all in resolving the issue, saying they could not refund me because the merchant name doesn't match the hotel name, on the other hand, they claimed that it was not possible for the host to add a bank account that does not match the name of the hotel, and that they only shared my credit card details with the host. In the end, I had to pay again via Venmo. At least one vacation day was lost trying to figure out what was going on, and god knows how much more time and headache trying to recover the funds. I ended up disputing the original "Therapy" transaction with my credit card bank, which apparently found the "scammer", and - what a surprise - I receive an email from the host a week later accusing me of asking his business to refund me!