Last week, I had the pleasure of going to a friend's wedding. Unfortunately, the hotel wasn't that great.
I wasn't going to complain but the hotel sent me a feedback form, so I decided to have some fun and completed it:
When I was a 7 year old boy, I went to the local funfair on a trip to Skegness with my family. It wasn’t often that I got to do this kind of thing as a kid and so as you’d imagine, I was rather excited about the whole thing.
We had a brilliant time, picking up plastic ducks with fishing canes, throwing balls at the coconut shy, even daring a go on the merry-go-round. Little did I know that my fun outing and the fond memories I should have enjoyed as an adult would be replaced by something much more sinister – The Waltzer.
Maybe I was naïve, maybe my mum shouldn’t have let me go on. What started as a fun ride soon turned to terror as the young gypsy span the cart faster and faster, despite my pleas for him to stop. That incident scarred me for life and so as one would assume, I have a general disliking for travellers as a whole.
You’re probably wondering where this little tale of woe is heading and are reaching for the “delete” button as you read but I felt it was important to provide you with some background information so that you can truly understand the nature of my anguish.
Like that 7 year old boy being treated to a trip to the funfair, my partner and I don’t often get the chance to ditch the kids and have a weekend away together. Don’t get me wrong, for £43 a night I wasn’t expecting the Ritz but all expectations went out of the window when we were greeted with the following statement from your reception:
“You may want to park your car down the road tonight as we’ve got a party in…..”
Brilliant we thought, we’re off to a wedding but maybe we could join in for a bit of a dance on our return.
“a party of travellers.”
Now, as welcome messages go, that had the diplomacy of the bomb on Hiroshima. Were we not due to be arriving at the wedding reception immediately, I would have thrown my luggage and, for their own safety, your staff, into the boot of the car for a quick getaway but alas, time was not on my side and so I had no option but to take my bag (minus any valuables) to my room.
On return to the hotel/site, just after midnight, I carefully managed to thread my car between the Transit vans and 4x4s that occupied your car park and took a deep breath before pushing my way through the throngs of white suits, plastic shoes and jauntily tilted headwear. Strict orders were given out to the rest of my party to, “avoid eye contact and don’t speak.”
Fortunately, the travellers were all too busy trying to out drink each other to care about us and the women of our group passed without suffering the indignity of any lewd comments, although that probably owes itself to the fact that they bare no relation to any of the travellers and so weren’t fair game.
I think your reception and bar staff had given up as the lobby was a ghost town. I imagine that they probably resigned to seek employment elsewhere in a less stressful environment such as a bomb disposal team. With the desk empty, we were left to help ourselves to our room keys before dodging the shirtless children and making our way to the relative safety of our rooms.
To be fair, the rooms were all clean and tidy, which I’m glad of as I refrained from getting dirty hands as I pushed the desk across the closed door behind us, barricading us from the marauding hordes. As you’d imagine, I got little sleep, no thanks to the constant noise in the corridors and loud party.
I was grateful in the morning that my car still owned a set of wheels so that we could make a swift exit as soon as possible.
Thank you for sending me your feedback form, I wasn’t going to bother notifying you of my woeful experience as I wasn’t planning on spending any time in one of your establishments again. I can’t believe your staff would be so ignorant as to allow a party of that size onto your premises at the detriment to other guests but then again I used to believe that Milli Vanilli sang their own records and we all know how that turned out.
