WARNING: long-winded diatribe ahead…read more
We decided to stay in Arcachon for one more night. Our current hotel didn't have any more availability, so we walked down the Boulevard de la Plage and were able to book the next night at the Arc Hotel. The woman at the front desk was friendly and accommodating.
The next day we arrived to check in at an hour after their suggested time of 14:00, alas the room was still not ready. After another hour (two hours after their suggested time) the room was finally ready. We thought little of it at the time, as we were grateful to have found another hotel on the beach at such short of notice.
The next day, once again, we decided to stay in Arcachon just one more night, and asked the same woman at the desk, in our messy garble of English and horrific French, if we were able to stay one more night. She paused for a brief second, and responded with, and only with "yes, c'est bon". We thanked her and went out for the day.
When we got back to the hotel that evening, we picked up the key from the same woman at the desk (you have to leave your key with the woman at the desk every time you leave the hotel) and went up to our room. The key didn't work anymore. We looked at the key, and there was a different room number on it.
My girlfriend went down to inform the woman at the desk that she had given us the wrong key, to which the woman responded, in a fierce defensive tone that we felt was unprovoked, "You do not have that room anymore." Dumbfounded, my girlfriend attempted to communicate that we had wanted the same room, just for one more night. The woman, that same sweet woman from the day before, continued on an aggressive rant about how we specifically requested another much more expensive and beach-facing room, that we had approved of the price hike that she informed us about, and that the staff has already moved our stuff from the old room to the new room.
It was all very creepy, especially because our personal stuff had indeed been transferred to the new room--bras, underwear, toothbrushes, etc had been picked up and draped on the same relative chair and bed of the new room.
Could it just have been miscommunication? We doubted it. We sat in our new room fuming, deciding if we should go back down, guns ablaze, and make a huge screaming production of it. In this scenario we would storm out dramatically while I canceled the payment on my credit card in front of the woman's face. We would then have to find another one at that late hour, or more likely sleep in our rental car or on the beach.
We already felt violated because of the unwarranted possessions transfer, and nothing was really going to change that. To convince the woman, who had what seemed a selectively hard time communicating with us, that we wanted the same room from the night before for the same price would not have changed that privacy violation. Maybe in Arcachon people don't care as much if random people just move their stuff? We found that unlikely as well.
We were desperate to have a place to stay at that point, as it was too cold outside to pass out on the beach. We decided, and it was tough to suppress the rage, to just swallow it and just take the new room with the nice beach view and not let it ruin the rest of our stay in Arcachon. It did ruin our otherwise lovely day in town, and it was one of the most disrespectful experiences I have had at a hotel in my life, even if the ole "ripoff the young Americans" game is popular sport in France.
All that said, the hotel is definitely not a four star hotel and hence overpriced. I found the lobby and downstairs charming with it's goofball interior, almost like some art deco era New York joint vomited on some faux 19th century French villa interior. Don't believe the "Jacuzzi and Sauna" signs, as none of them were operational and seemed like they had been out of order for some time. The pool is colder than the beach water. The rooms are bare and old school, the pillows might as well be filled with straw. Breakfast is a steep 16 euro each. There is a parking lot that's gated at night, which is convenient given the alternative of parking on the narrow streets surrounding the place. It's located about a half kilometer from the main drag and nearer to the restaurants relatively off the beaten path that I enjoyed more anyway to the more expensive tourist joints that feature 70s American rock cover bands.
