The lobby looks really nice but that's about where the nice stops.
We picked this hotel based on the beautiful website photos and thought it would be a nice place to come after staying at Drumtochty Castle, where we got married. I felt horribly sick as I was still in my first trimester of pregnancy and so sat down while my husband and his friend tried to get the action of anyone to check us in. After finishing some meaningless banter with a colleague a rather fat, sweaty, balding man came up to the till with a "What do you want?!" attitude. The rudeness was overwhelming as everyone else we'd met in Scotland had been amazingly good humored people.
We get the key to our room and go up to our room 318. Upon entering, the smell of smoke hit us forcefully, the room was tiny without a ceiling light or light switch which meant that you have to enter in the dark, shimmy past the bed, being careful not to hit the small TV on the wall and fumble around for the switch on the lamp at the opposite end of the room. I had been extremely ill the day before and still was unable to eat or drink anything without immediately being sick, so it was decided that I would lay down and try to sleep. We opened the windows...which were then furiously attacked by coastal birds and pidgins who wanted to get out of the cold.
My husband went to get juice and I decided to climb into the shower. Big mistake, as I turned on the water, long and short, curly and straight hairs in all manner of shades started to emerge from the corners of the shower floor. It was a type of grate instead of a flush surface and the smell of mold and decaying flesh - no doubt an accumulation of dandruff and skin cells under the grate that never gets cleaned...started to waft up towards me. The shower flooded the bathroom floor as the plastic shield wasn't large enough and there was no curtain or door to prevent this from happening... There was no soap or shampoo, or courtesy products... There was eye-liner on the mirror and cigarette ash all over the nightstand. Moving slowly, I crawled back into the bed, that I'm sure was equally disgusting and waited for my husband and sickness to pass.
We entered the elevator with a cleaning lady and I asked her if our room could be cleaned and listed everything that needed to be addressed. She urged us to tell reception. There, a very efficient polite woman greeted us and offered to move us to a different room. She was very friendly and apologized, saying that smoking is not allowed, etc. As I hadn't eaten in 2 days and was finally hungry, we asked if we could move our stuff after we'd been into town. She said that would be no problem. We came back in the evening to get the new key and switch rooms only that instead of the friendly, professional woman, there was the fat, sweaty, balding man in a plum colored shirt who intentionally ignored us even as we stood maybe two feet away from his face. We explained that we were ready to move our things to the new room and could we please have the keys. What followed was a lecture, that no, this would not be possible. They are fully booked and have no rooms to give us and that they were already inconvenienced by us when a man checked in whom they wanted to give our room to but our stuff was still in there... I just looked at my husband confused and asked, "Well, has our room been cleaned?" He announced that he knew nothing about that and that it wasn't his job. At that point he checked the computer and ranted at us some more. "In fact, we did have a room for you, but we couldn't move you because your things weren't packed!" I'm still confused about the bottom line and still nauseous. Then another woman came behind the desk and upon hearing my husband talk about being moved, produced two keys to a different room with an air of "of course." We went up to the old room to gather our things. The bed was made, but the ash was still on the nightstand, eyeliner on the mirror, no soap... The other room did have soap, seemed clean and didn't have a arsenal of birds flying into the window.
In the morning for check out, I sat down in the lounge on one of the chairs in the middle of the room. There was a binder on the coffee table but as their was seating for about 8 people around the table I thought nothing of it. An employee of the hotel told me that I could not sit there because she was sitting there. At first I didn't understand 'You are sitting here?" It was obvious that whoever had been sitting on the couch. I have worked in the service industry while at university and a huge no-no is to make a client feel unwelcome or that you are more important than they are. I looked at the suitcases, my wedding dress and husbands dress bag with his kilt in it. She moved one couch over met by another employee who spoke quite loudly about the "inconvenience" then they continued their evaluation interview. The phone rang and rang. People waited. They didn't get up.. read more
