Cautionary tale: DON'T book here
Our room faces tall, grey, terribly kept buildings. We get hardly any sun. The only way we can see the sky at all is by lying down directly next to the window and looking directly up, and even then we only see a little. Between us and the decrepit buildings across from us is an equally derelict alleyway, which reeks of greasy kitchen exhaust that we can actually smell in our room through two layers of windows which we can't even open. Our shower was covered in hair (of multiple lengths - even more concerning), our toilet takes forever to flush, and our showerhead is coming unmounted from the wall. Had to use the panorama mode on my phone to capture how we can't see anything but towering buildings. Unbelievable that we're paying close to US$200/night for this.
COVID hasn't been kind to the service industry, so to an extent the shabby amenities can be excused. But the poor quality of service can't. My mother, a widow of not yet even 2 months, only chose to make this trip to see my frail 93yo grandma with early onset dementia. My mother is also extremely claustrophobic, to the point where she has been hospitalized because of claustrophobia induced anxiety attacks in the past. It's horrible seeing her in this much distress, all while we are both still grieving. So when we first checked in and my mother saw the dismal view outside our window and realized she can't even open the window, her feelings of being trapped got progressively worse until she was panicking. She pleaded with hotel staff over the phone for a different room, and they simply refused to offer anything helpful, not even an emotional crisis line. They repeatedly dismissed her, told her there were no more rooms left until they finally budged and told her to wait an hour for a call from a Department of Health 'Senior'.
The DOH is even worse than the hotel. He called our room just to tell her there was nothing he could do, after she had explained to him again that she was having an anxiety attack from claustrophobia and was experiencing debilitating fear. He didn't seem to know what claustrophobia was, or an anxiety attack for that matter, and he definitely didn't care. He simply said if she feels unwell she can call 999 to go to an emergency room, where I wouldn't be permitted to accompany her, which is obviously not a solution if she's in emotional distress. He then proceeded to make all kinds of excuses for why she couldn't possibly be moved, including claiming that our flight had a confirmed case of omicron - which our airline did not and still has not informed us of, nor has it been anywhere in the news. As you can imagine, this distressed my mother even more in her already panicked state. She then said fine, if no one would move her somewhere where she could feel safe, was there at least a mental health or psychological support resource she could reach out to? The 'Senior' simply said no, there's no such thing, and didn't even bother trying to transfer her to, for example, another department that could help her. During this call, I was frantically searching for anything that could help her and found multiple mental health services and hotlines. The fact that the DOH did not even bother to make sure these are available to people in quarantine is frankly appalling.
On top of all this, I can also say the food here is only marginally better than what we were served at Penny Bay for our mandatory 4 day quarantine. At least there we could open windows and see the sky.
TL;DR: Holiday Inn Golden Mile should not have gotten into hospitality if they weren't planning on being hospitable, and the DOH is pathetic. Happy for everyone that managed to get room changes; we weren't so lucky. Might try reporting/sending them pictures of faulty room features. read more