Britannia Hotels Ltd
Reviews and Complaints

The Cavendish Hotel, 38 Grand Parade, Eastbourne BN21 4DH
Neil Sharples, 27 North Church Street, Bakewell DE45 1DB

Dear Sir/Madam,
On 07/09/2021 I stayed at your hotel for 4 nights in room 217 (moved to 418 on day 4) Booking Reference [protected]. The accommodation was unsatisfactory in the following ways:

Tuesday night 7th, Found bed covers were wet in the morning from a drip in the ceiling. When I asked to be moved to another room, I was told that this was not possible. They said they would rectify the problem.
Wed night 9th. Did not have the problem
Thu night 10th. Water started dripping continuously at 1.20am on to the bed. I moved the bed to the corner and phoned reception. They promised to fix and dripping stopped 25 mins later. At 3.30am water started dripping again continuously. Phoned reception again and dripping was stopped 10mins later. Water started dripping again at 6.15am. Phoned reception and stopped after 10 mins.
Spoke to reception in the morning and was offered to move to another room 418 after 4.00pm for Fri night 11th.
I have contracted with you to provide me with Refund for the nights we were given unusable accommodation and the impact on ourselves on holiday after a sleepless night .
These were not provided with reasonable care and skill because the problem was not fixed as promised and the hotel was clearly aware of the exiting problem emanating from the floor above, (that was apparently relying on a bucket to collect the water).

It was an implied term of our contract that the accommodation provided would be of a standard of room and quality reasonably to be expected from this type and price of hotel.
It's also an implied term that the service provided would be done so with reasonable care and skill as required by the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 / Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Therefore, you are in breach of contract.
As such, I am legally entitled to receive compensation from you. In consequence I am claiming the sum of £375.48 calculated as 2 nights £175.48 and £200 covering the personal affect and on our holiday.
I require your response to this letter within 14 days

Yours faithfully, Neil Sharples

The following is an account of my stay.

We arrived early at you hotel and due to not being able to check in until 4pm (the latest time I have ever had at any hotel I have stayed in unless you want to pay an additional £10 to check in early) we left our bags in a secure room ready to check in later that day. We arrived back at the hotel later that day with friends who waited in the bar area whilst we checked in. We booked for a double room and the reception staff announced we were to be upgraded but with twin beds and a sea view but you can push the beds together. Room number 256. We were in a rush so we took the room. When arriving in the room its was awful. The toilet seat was hanging off, the was a picture that should've been hanging on the wall (and you could see where it should've been by the discolouration of the paint and the bare hook) the bathroom was in a sorry state of repair and the curtains wouldn't draw shut and dirty windows so you really couldn't see the sea view nicely. The whole room was shabby and grubby. We got changed and my wife went to our friends whilst I went to complain about the state of the room. The reception staff apologised and he offered me another room which I accepted. There was no offer of help to move the bags to the other room.

Room 131 at the the far end of the build was a disgrace. At the time I threw the bags into the room and I didn't have a chance to inspect it until
the following day.

Where to start?

You could hardly see out the windows to the sea view because they were filthy inside and out. There was paint peeling off the woodwork of the windows onto the carpet. The curtains were shabby and wouldn't meet in the middle which meant your room was lit up at night by the street light. The beds (twin again) were more than firm and should have been thrown out years ago. The sofa bed in the room was stained and had a rip in it and when I pulled the bed out to take a look it was stained and was in a pretty disgusting state. The cushions on the sofa bed were flat and stank of damp. Only one of the bedside lights worked. The headboard was one just hanging on t the wall. The TV was so small you couldn't see anything on it from the other side of the room. my laptop has a bigger screen. The room hadn't been cleaned properly there was dust on the top of the wardrobe and pictures and fittings. The radiator was in a poor state.

All this before I even got to the bathroom. I couldn't be bothered in the morning to complain again because we were on a busy schedule with friends to meet early in the morning and a busy day at a Food Festival. We arrived back at our room later on the Sunday evening for a quick shower (which we hadn't used yet at this point) before taking my wife out for a romantic meal. I went to the shower first.

The bathroom

Shower came on I stepped into the bath. The water started to fill in the bath and not drain away. Upon inspection there was someone else's hair clogging up the plug hole and loose hair was flotation around my feet. Absolutely DISGUSTING! So looking at the bathroom in detail I also noticed the bath was leaking and there was mould down the side of the bath were the water was leaking out. There were cracked tiles and missing grout and I'm not sure having the extractor fan that close to the shower head is electrically safe?

So my wife couldn't shower that evening because of the disgusting state of the hair in the bath and on the way out to dinner I stopped at the reception and complained to the gentleman behind the desk and shown him the photos of the hair in the plug hole and he apologised and assured me he would have it cleaned.

Later that evening were arrived back at our room (after midnight) and nothing had been done. The hair was still in the plug hole. Shocking services and cleanliness. Your hotel staff should be ashamed of themselves. The next day and still no shower we checked out. On leaving the room the house keeping staff were nearby and I pointed out that the room was dirty and there was hair in the plug hole to which I got some acknowledgement followed by a bit of laughing as I walked away down the corridor. I went to reception to check out and immediately asked for the manager. Tracey Mockford came to see me and stood there and shown her the video and of the state the room was in. I explained how I had asked the staff on the previous shift to clean the hair out of the bath and nothing was done. To be fair to Tracey she couldn't apologies enough and was visibly shocked with regards to the hair and the lack of services and cleanliness. She was also apauled at the state of the room and asked me to email you Nick Wright. However, she said that she was only authorised to offer me a 10% discount which even she was embarrassed to offer me.

I paid nearly £300 for the 2 night stay in your Hotel. I was given a room which was dirty and disgusting. We couldn't use the shower and when I did complain nothing was done about it. I have attached photos for you to look at and to comment on. Is this an acceptable level of service and cleanliness especially during the current pandemic?
Is this acceptable to you? Would you pay £300 to stay here with your wife?

I have had a response from NicK Wright and quite frankly it's an insult. What makes you think I would ever stay in a Britannia Hotel again. See below.

"Dear Chris,
Thank you for your email regarding your stay at the Royal Albion. We sincerely apologies that you have been given reason to complain, and that this stay did not meet your expectations.

I believe that your concerns were about the condition of the room including other issues and I strongly apologise for that, this is not what we wish our guests to see. I have personally addressed this with our housekeeping and maintenance staff to ensure this won't happen again. We have well trained departments staff that work very hard to keep the hotel at its finest condition, unfortunately this time due to certain reasons they did not manage to perform at their best. I can assure you that a strong reminder was passed to the heads of mentioned departments, so nothing like that would happen in future.

As a goodwill gesture and to apologies for this inconvenience and any upset that this may have caused to our guest, I would like to offer:
10% of the total cost of accommodation but please inform expedia to contact us for the refund as it was a third party booking.

Also, when you book a standard room next time,
A free upgrade to a sea view room with late check out
on a future stay with us. This offer is valid for a period of one year and is subject to availability. Please be advise that the request days would be looked at 7-10 days prior arrival. The offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer nor can be booked through any third party. We therefor ask that you contact the hotel directly by emailing foh715@britanniahotels.com or customerservices715@britanniahotels.com where our Front of House manager will be able to assist you in making your booking.

As our services did not meet your expectation, this offer has been made in order to demonstrate the level of service"

We paid for 3 nights B & B arrival 20/08/21 Departure 20/08/21 only to find many items on buffet not available each morning.
This included bacon, fried eggs & beans each morning. No pastries, no butter for toast every morning. No milk most mornings. Milk dispenser was unclean with bits coming out when you tried to pour milk.
No supervisors to complain to.
When we joined the queue at reception was told the manager wasn't in till late, but we could e-mail head office with our complaints.

Hi,
I had booked the Grand at scarborough for saturday the 21/08/21. We we're looking forward to staying there. But for a start we had a 1 hr check in at 5.15pm when we arrived. I asked for a family room which they found me. But to say it was grotty was a understatement. The door in the bathroom was rotten around the door frame my daughter went in and locked the door for her shower then struggled to open the door as the lock didn't work properly so she was panicking and then we managed to get it open. The corridor's was dirty a packets of biscuits had been emptied on the stairs. We also had the evening meal which we booked was disgusting my two children didn't have anything to eat as there was little choice. Very dissatisfied as I paid £194 for a room that I wouldn't expect to pay more than £40, Thanks Mr J L Tustain

We run a very busy bar & events room, & look forward to a mini break with our two little dogs. We usually book to stay in one of your hotels in Buxton (The Palace), however this was booked up for our break from 16/08/21 - 19/08/21. Therefore we were offered to stay at The Grand in Scarborough, a double room with a balcony & sea view, which sounded nice so we booked it at £248 total for our stay.
We had to wait so long to check in it was very frustrating, however not to complain about this as were so happy to be away, this was until we reached our room. wow, absolutely disgusted! Stepladders leaning against the wall outside our room. Bogies on the wall next to the bed. The bed must have marginally classed as a double, the window out to the balcony did not close fully & had a couple of door chains, if this was to make it secure? Really!? I have attached a video of the balcony which as you can see was vile, my husband wouldn't let me go out. As you can see covered in cans, rubbish & to our amazement what we could describe as drug bags. The toilet looked like it had just been ‘used' & not cleaned.
I went to request a couple of pillows after searching just about the whole hotel the only staff I could find were on reception with a mile long queue. I managed to jump in between checkins & made my request. This was followed up on more than 3 occasions throughout the evening, on the last occasion we were given a voucher to connect to WiFi for the rest of our stay. Only to be rejected as it had already been used! Each time we were in reception someone or several people were complaining which didn't give us much faith that our stay was going to get any better. Our pillows arrived extremely late, the balcony was not cleaned until the following evening. When going to the bar there was no gin, no lemonade, no coke & no Diet Coke!
It's been so difficult these past 18 months in our industry so cannot tell you how thrilled we were to be taking a couple of days away for the first time since we were locked down only to be let down & feeling miserable our entire break.
I look forward to your reply in the hope that you can let me know how you can rectify this & how we will be compensated for this disgraceful stay in your hotel.

Regards

C. Bancroft

Good Morning

This is my final request that I will make for some customer care from you. This is now over a month old and no action has been taken here.

This is now the 7th request and not even a response from anyone.

Can I please request some attention to my original email that was sent through as a customer complaint on 11th July please!

Sent 11th July 2020 -

Booking Reference: BK000050105/1
Hotel: Meon Valley Hotel, Golf & Country Club

May I please start this email with a request for a response to these matters as soon as possible.

I am truly amazed as to the rating of this hotel being listed as a 4 star accommodation. No more than a 2 star would be generous! Having stayed at the location, with a fee of £144.00 for a room only, the list of issues have been shorted to save the time in going into every issue we experienced during our stay.

On arrival at the location, the booking check in was noted as 15.00, however the hotel stated that this was incorrect and it should be 16.00. My son had booked a golf tee time for 16.00!

The reception stated that they would see if a room was available, and they confirmed that one was ready. We were provided room 102. On arrival at the hotel room, there were used bottles of water, dirty cups, uncollected, left on the window sill outside our door. On entering the room, we had a dirty bin, with used face wipes, toothpaste and razor inside the bin. How can this be if the room had been cleaned! No cups were on display for tea or coffee and a kettle that looked like it had been pulled from the dump! There was dirt in the bathroom, mould in the bath and dirt (stained) on the curtains. The sheets were marked with dirt that looked like blood stains... disgusting!

The light on the bedside table provided its own electric shock (H&S Hazard!) as I attempted to turn the light on and off as there is no button. There was no hairdryer in the room and when I went to reception to request a loan of one, the receptionist stated that we are fully booked and if there is not one in the top drawer then we do not have one to give you!)

I have taken photographic evidence for each of these points as I will be escalating this higher if I do not receive an adequate response to this despicable hotel experience. It is no wonder that my card was debited with £144 before I stayed as I am sure that customers would not pay for the room due to the cleanliness and unhelpfulness, however, I have to deal with this now and will demand a refund / compensation to be paid to me for this stay. I will never stay at this hotel again and will note this on trip advisor to ensure that nobody else has the experience that my family had for this stay. I work extremely hard through the year and through a website check your hotel came out as closest to what we needed to be in contact with... how wrong this was and how much I regret this now! A completed waste of my hard earned money has been paid to you for a complete shambles of a room and a disgraced grading of a 4 star hotel! NO Way on earth is this graded as this level and is completely misleading. Out of courtesy, I do expect a response to this due to the H&S concerns in the room and the value that I have paid for this stay!

Thank you

We booked a stay at britania International hotel in London 13.08.2021 until 15.08.2021.

We arrived and check in were brilliant, can't complain. We got our room 813. 

Room 811 next door was being used as a brothel. Constant knocking at there door, different men in and out right up until 6.30am.

They were smoking in their room which set all the fire alarms off on the floor at around 1.30am.

I first went down to reception to tell them and got no joy. It got to 2am and my partner went down. The reception rang 811 room to tell them they'd had a complaint. But nothing changed. 

The noise, the banging was shaking our room. Weve had 0hours sleep and had to be out of the room for 10am. Again I complained in the morning as we were leaving and the man I spoke to didn't care less. I had to walk out of the reception I was that angry. 

We had to travel home a 5 hour journey with no sleep and a very very bad experience of our stay. Weve saved up months to go to London and we were too tired to do anything, so it was a wasted trip. 

I'm absolutely discusted that the reception wouldn't take our complaint serious.

We are only a young couple ourselves, but that weekend was like we was living in a porno. 

I have stayed at britania International a few years prior, this is why I booked again. But personally it was the worst decision I have ever made.
We had no tea, coffee, sugar or even cups in the room for that matter. When we asked at the reception we were sent on a wild goose chase to get our own.
This is not the service we paid for.
The rooms are in desperate need of a decorate. They smelt dirty. But that didn't really matter to us as we just needed a place to sleep. But we didn't even get that.

Look forward to your reply. Thank you 

Emma 

I have made a complaint to the relevant hotel with the email address and hotel number, I have received no response from anyone. We are disgusted at the way we were spoken too, the room we paid extra for was not as described and was dirty, even with cigarette ash in the window which I have taken photos of. Our food was diabolical and I wouldn't have fed this to my dog, we saved for ages for this night away free from our children and wanted a special night in a tranquil quiet place to relax, this is what I told staff when I booked but instead was put in a room right above a wedding marquee with music extremely loud from 6:30 to 00:15.

To whom it concern
Re: complaint about my stay at Britannia Hotel Manchester.

I stayed in the Britannia Hotel, Portland Street, Manchester, UK from 1st August to the 4th August 2021 inclusive. I was in room 138. At the time of the booking I specifically requested a low room, this was honoured.

The first aspect of my complaint relates to the check in procedure. The young lady who checked our party in asked the lead guest [myself] to sign the check in card. I proceeded to check the details and I pointed out that the factual information including my email and phone number was incorrect. Her response to this, is that this does not matter and that I should simply sign the paperwork.

I replied that I want the details to be correct and that I don't sign anything until I have read the details for accuracy. At this point, I noticed in the bottom right corner, a box that asks to be ticked if we require any assistance in the case of an emergency evacuation. If I had followed the instructions of the said member of staff, I would not have seen this box. It was very evident that the second guest in our room was using a mobility aid, and when I consulted my friend we both mutually decided that actually my friend would require assistance in the case of an emergency.

So at the point of check-in, our needs [specifically the need for assistance during an emergency] would NOT have been identified if I had simply ignored the small print and proceeded to sign as per her request. I was not happy at this point, but I considered this simply as an oversight and as time saving technique on the part of the staff.

The second aspect of my complaint refers to the small chineese/oriental lady who was checking in at the adjacent till. Whilst I was not listening to the adjacent conversation, it was very evident that she was aggressive to the guests checking in at the same time.

The main part of my complaint refers to the handing of the fire alarm in the hotel.
In the early hours on the morning of the 3rd of August, [approximately 03:00] I woke upto the sound of the hotel's fire alarm. I woke my friend up. Please bear in mind that this is the lady who we had ticked the box on the check-ion form for requiring assistance during an emergency evacuation. As I am the health and safety officer in my own place of work, I am fully aware of the protocols that are expected to be followed upon the hearing of a fire alarm. I assisted my friend [who uses a mobility aid] down the stairs. No member of staff contacted us by phone or in person regarding this assistance, either during or after the emergency procedure. We had filled in the form to indicate the need for assistance, yet it was not provided.

Furthermore, t here was no one in charge. Not a single member of staff was following any safety procedures or checking that guests were following procedures Guests were leaving the rooms and clearly using the lifts. The check in staff remained in the reception area. There was no one checking to see if all the guests had been accounted for.

Whilst they communicated a sense of calmness, they also communicated a lack of awareness around any safety procedures, in particular to vulnerable guests, who had confirmed at the point of check in the need for assistance in the event of an emergency. This was not the case. Understandably I am not happy. However, it turned out to be a hoax/prank so there was no real casualties. I hate to see this happen again given a real emergency.

I would like you to resolve this matter in the following way
A] conduct an external/independent investigation as to what happened on the night and take the necessary action required by yourself.
B] provide me with an explanation as to why no one contacted us regarding assistance.
C] Provide me with a refund of the money that I spent as our needs were not simply met.

These are my contact details
[protected]@education.ie
[protected]

BRITANNIA INTERNATIONAL HOTEL {bih}.

ATTN: MR. SAPAN DEZWIN VINCENT,

Please find attached for further proceedings on your job processes. You are to refer to Co-ordinator in India for further proceedings on time.

Sequel to the resumption of your job, he will assist you considering the essentiality of time involved; Representing a higher percentage of expatriate services employees in relations to this project.

You will contact him and he shall assist you in timely obtaining of your necessary residence and a work permit papers/ VISA with the United Kingdom Immigration Services.

BRITISH COUNCIL:

Contact: Mr. Michael Rawlings,

Number: [protected] begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              [protected]      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting [protected] end_of_the_skype_highlighting

E-mail: [protected]@yahoo.in

You are not going to the British Immigration or British council of interviews or any meeting with them or with Mr. Michael Rawlings, as they will purposely fail you with out any good reason)

Please endeavor to update us on your successful processes with him for liaison purpose.

Regards,

Good luck in your answers.

MR. ERIC MILLER,

Human Res. Dev. Manager Tel: +44 {0} [protected]

+44 {0} [protected] Fax: No 0044 [protected]

Reception staff is on duty 24 hours Tel: +44 {[protected]

BRITANNIA INTERNATIONAL HOTEL

Dear whom this may concern,
I am writing to you to complain about my recent stay at your hotel Royal Albion in brighton. I am very appauled how your staff treated me firstly we booked in asked for a double room and he was very rude and he customer service was terrible, We went up to the room and it was dirty the bath had all dirt around it, we phone for room service and said up to 15 minutes wait only one porte. I was very unhappy with our stay as it was my partners birthday and we had come a long way to visit brighton,