We arrived in Barcelona after a delayed journey. We were travelling with 2 children. We arrived in Barcelona after a delayed journey. We were travelling with 2 children.
Before we set off I had rung Airbnb to make sure there would be no issue with getting into the Sweet inn apartment even if we arrived after midnight. I was told on the phone that all would be okay.
At the airport, I received messages from someone at sweet inn explaining about the digital key we needed to download to enter the apartment building - which, according to the person who texted me, would definitely work - and that there would be a back up key at their offices. Sweet inn then sent me an email stating that we would check in at 8:30pm even though that was clearly never going to happen based on our flight times.
When we did arrive at the apartment after 1am, the digital key did not work. We tried several times but to no avail. I then tried ringing and texting the numbers I had for sweet inn and Airbnb but no answer. I am standing there in the middle of the night with my family and suitcases trying to get some information but we got no help.
We decided to see where the back-up key was and saw that it was a 1.5 miles walk from the apartment. There was no public transport that we could see and hardly any taxis. We then did manage to speak to a man at Airbnb who was not very helpful but at least answered the phone.
In the end we found a taxi that took us to the sweet inn offices to retrieve the key. The taxi cost us €20!
When we got back to the apartment, the key opened the front door and we went up to what looked like the first floor, obviously the door that corresponded to their instructions but that door did not open with the code communicated to us either. It was only when my husband checked the second floor that we found the door with the keypad and were able to enter. Only to find that the sofa bed was not made up for the kids so we still had to do that as well after our long journey.
On the first full day of our stay, the toilet stopped flushing. We contacted Sweet Inn to get them to fix it. Again, they were slow to respond, but the best but was that they then expected us to stay in to wait for a technician to come. Thereby implicitly admitting that their “digital key” did not work. Needless to say, the toilet did not get fixed on the first day. The toilet was finally fixed on day 3, when a sweet inn employee also came to pick up our back-up front door key. For me yet another sign that their “digital key” does not work and has never worked. So I felt very cheated by sweet inn that they caused us so much stress for absolutely no reason. They should have told us that either we couldn’t check in outside of office hours, in which case my friend would have collected the key for us beforehand, or that we should have taken a taxi straight to their offices from the airport to collect the key before attempting checkin.
Needless to say, we are incredibly disappointed in the Sweet Inn and Airbnb. Not a great way to start a short holiday.