Hotel Concordia Splendide, Where Our Reserved Suite Was Described As More Of An Intention

We arrived at the Concordia Splendide at four in the afternoon, that being the hour the establishment nominates for arrivals in all of its correspondence. Our booking was found at once. Our name was correct. Our dates were correct. Our card had been charged in full some weeks earlier. The single element in dispute was the room, which the system showed as existing and the building did not.

We were shown to Room 214 as a gesture of good faith. Room 214 contained a wardrobe, a window and eleven stacked chairs, and gave every impression of having been a room once, in the way that a field can have been a village. The wardrobe was excellent. It was solid, it closed properly, and we would happily stay in the wardrobe again.

A second option was produced. This was described as a garden suite and was reached by walking through the kitchen, past the bins and across a car park, a journey that changes a person by the time they arrive. The garden was a raised bed containing gravel. The suite was warm in a manner suggesting proximity to something mechanical and unwell.

By seven we had been offered, in order: a family room with one bed, a twin room with no beds pending a delivery, a room belonging to the hotel next door under an arrangement nobody present could describe, and the possibility that we might like to go and look at the sea. We went and looked at the sea. The sea was fine. The sea was the highlight of the stay.

The night manager, walking into all of this at eight, was the first person to say a true sentence out loud. She explained that the booking system had been sold to the owners as a solution and has since become the principal thing the staff manage. She had been apologising for it since April. She apologised again, and meant it, and we have recorded that as the only genuine amenity on the premises.

We were given, in the end, Room 109, which was real, and small, and had a door that locked, and which we entered with the frank gratitude of the shipwrecked. The confirmation email had promised a marble bathroom, a private seating area and a view of the promenade. Room 109 had a promenade in the sense that one exists, some distance away, in another direction entirely.