An Airbnb customer claims he endured a ' holiday from hell ' after arriving at what he thought was a luxury hotel only to find it boarded up as the owners had 'abandoned it almost two years ago'.
Sebastian Alexander booked a lavish New Year trip to Costa Rica with his wife Amy, forking out more than £1,000 for a 10-day stay at Hotel Casa Blanca in Tamarindo.
But the pair arrived at the end of December to find the luxury hotel apparently deserted, fenced-up and 'like a prison camp' with tall mesh fencing and desolate surroundings.
In its listing on Airbnb, the hotel promised blue skies and a palm tree-covered beach, but Sebastian claims he was instead confronted by a bleak abandoned property.
The business owner then desperately tried to contact Airbnb but claims he received no response until five days later.
By then, the couple had already spent almost £2,000 on alternative accommodation.
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Sebastian claims he was eventually refunded by Airbnb after two weeks but is yet to receive an explanation of why the empty property was still live on its website.
Airbnb has since apologised for the family's ordeal and said that their 'original handling of this matter fell below the usual high standards' they set themselves.
Sebastian, 33, from Hereford, Herefordshire, said: "It really was a nightmare. It was one of those holidays from hell situations.
"When we got there, it was all boarded up. It looked pretty run down with the fences up and no foliage outside. It'd just kind of been left there.
"It was literally like a prison camp. You couldn't get in there, it'd been gutted.
"We looked on [other websites], everywhere, every single property was fully booked. Tamarindo is the place to be for New Year in Costa Rica.
"The only other place we could find was [a large chain hotel] which was £4,700 a night. It was that insane.
"We travel quite a lot and this is our thing. It's been two years and it was meant to be a nice trip to Costa Rica for three weeks.
"After the experience, I don't want to use Airbnb ever again."
Sebastian booked the trip after finding what he thought was a 'great' hotel which appeared in pictures online as a stylish and well-kept hotel with excellent surfing beaches nearby.
But when he and mental health therapist Amy arrived at the location, they were confronted by the abandoned accommodation and no help from Airbnb for five days.
Sebastian said: "I received an automated message to say 'your reservation is confirmed'. Even on the app, it says the host's response time is one hour, which isn't correct because they're long gone.
"They took the money two months ago and we turned up to a closed down hotel.
"The driver said 'right, we're here' and it was only from looking at the photos and asking the guys next door [that we found it]. We just broke down and were sat in the bar next door.
"We arrived at the boarded up place at about 2pm and we were like 's**t, it's going to get dark in the next two hours'. We needed to sort something out.
"We were sat on the beach and there are crocodiles in Costa Rica. There are big signs everywhere saying 'be careful - crocodiles'.
"Luckily, the barman next door helped us out. His wife worked at a hotel up the hill and we managed to book somewhere for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day for £400 a night.
"We stayed there for two nights then moved down to the other end of the beach to something that was about £1,200 for eight days.
"We were in the restaurant next door and the guys said 'it's terrible. As soon as covid hit, the owners handed the keys back and it's been vacant ever since'."
Sebastian claims he contacted Airbnb on the live chat facility but the chats kept closing - while their attempts to get urgent help went unanswered.
Sebastian said: "We contacted Airbnb and they kept just closing the chats. We pressed the 'I'm in Distress' button to try and get some help, but nothing materialised.
"It said they promised to contact us within the hour.
"We didn't know where we were going, what we were doing or if we were going to get our money back."
He added: "Airbnb's legal team came back and said 'due to our terms and conditions we will refund you your stay and give you a token of goodwill for your next stay' because we didn't rebook through Airbnb.
"We're out of pocket by quite a substantial amount of money and are not very happy. You want to rock up on the beach and just relax, but instead we spent days and days moving hotels."
Sebastian claims he had received several automated emails from Airbnb about his upcoming stay and has now questioned why the company have not vetted hotels.
A spokeswoman for Airbnb said: "Our original handling of this matter fell below the usual high standards we set for ourselves.
"We have reached out to the guest to apologise and offer further support, and have suspended the Host from the platform.
"With more than 1 billion arrivals to date, negative experiences on Airbnb are rare, but where they do happen, we work hard to make things right and our customer service team is on hand 24/7 to help."
