Rivendell Cappadocia

The hotel itself was visually stunning, in a small town away from the touristy busyness of Goreme. Potentially a very unique facility had we not had other issues.

We were excited to stay at this unique hotel in a quiet old town, but the issues started as soon as we arrived. We were told via text that our room would be ready at 2 PM, but when we got there, we were told it would be another two hours for cleaning. When we finally checked in, we were given a completely different room than the one we booked on booking.com. Instead of a large, bright suite with beds in separate spaces as pictured in the listing, we got a musty, cold and very dirty lower-level room with two beds crammed into it and one tiny window. As we had a 3:30 AM wake-up for a balloon ride, we decided to make do, until the single bed collapsed and could not be slept in. They offered to move us to another hotel, but it would’ve meant hauling our luggage again to the car (parking is a five-minute walk to public square in the town, which was fine but not mentioned ahead of time), plus a 15-minute drive with no guarantee the new room would be better. First, they told us the original room we booked had a broken toilet, but when we asked to sleep there and just use the bathroom in other room, they said no—confirming suspicions that we were being lied to. The other person who were were communicating with on text said that we hadn't booked that suite but had booked this small room - which is untrue as the photos on the listing showed otherwise. They had this same room also available on Airbnb for a higher price and we suspect they double booked it or used those photos to represent the smaller room. After hours of back-and-forth talking via Google translate with the onsite person, someone on text and someone on the phone when we should’ve been sleeping, they moved our friend to a nearby hotel to sleep. The WhatsApp communication was especially poor—rude, dismissive, and unhelpful. We were even told to “stop bothering” them because they had “solved” the issue. We decided not to stay the second night. Overall a terrible experience.