The £8.75 Apology for a hotel room with Turds and Toilet paper

Not the most pleasant headline, but this is a true travel story about an experience at a leading British hotel chain during a city break in Liverpool.

I travel a bit more now that I am retired, and love nothing more than a short city break, mostly in the UK, but occasionally further afield.

I had longed to visit the famous, almost glittering English city, to walk its streets, home to the most successful football team ever, not to mention its astonishing musical heritage.

I booked a modest hotel. Modest, but part of the International Hotel Group, so by no means cheap and cheerful or outside of the mainstream.

The staff at the hotel were remarkably friendly and helpful, and check-in was fast and efficient, with none of those tedious delays common to the check-in experience, with dazed staff asking you to fill in forms and having to look things up on their screens.

I was grateful for that, for I had experienced a long and tiring day.  Up at 4:00am to get to Dublin Airport for a 7:00am flight. And then, a full day of walking the city, meeting friends, and not checking into the hotel until about 6:00pm in the evening.

I was absolutely exhausted and just wanted to flake out and recover from the day.

My room seemed pleasant enough, but when I entered the en-suite bathroom, I found to my horror the unflushed turds and toilet paper of the previous occupant.

Ugh. Disgusting. I tried to flush it away, but it wouldn’t go. Six or seven flushes it took to clear the stinking mess. And it was pretty obvious that the flush simply did not have the power to clear the bowl.

In due course, I reported the matter to reception. By that time, the bowl had clogged again and was again unflushable.

While I was out, they went to my room, and when I returned, it was clear. There was an empty bottle of some chemical drain cleaner type liquid, left on top of the toilet seat.

I subsequently wrote to the International H- Hotel Group,  in quite moderate terms in the circumstances, outlining the disgusting experience.

They replied with an apology. And in truth, I would have been happy enough with just a genuine and sincere apology. I was not actively seeking compensation. Although if any had been offered, then of course I would be interested.

In their email reply, they said that as a gesture of their sincerity in their apology, they would award me five thousand points on their rewards/incentive scheme.

On the face of it, that looked okay.

But when I looked into what five thousand points meant, I discovered that the cash value of the five thousand points was just £8.75.

I was astonished at their “sincerity”.

Under their point scheme, you can accumulate points towards a free stay at one of the group’s worldwide portfolio of hotels.

For one free night, you require, for a modest hotel of the kind I had booked, 40,000 to 50,000 points.

Therefore, my “sincere”  five thousand points were worth one-eighth of the number of points required for a free night.

On the open market, the room costs with taxes,  some £70 per night.

One-eighth of £70 is £8.75.

That then is the measure of the International Hotel Group’s “sincerity.”  It is also the measure of finding unflushed turds and toilet paper from a previous guest in your pre-booked room.

That is not “sincerity.”  That is insulting.

One would have to have a very low opinion of oneself to accept the “sincerity” of any such apology.

So I told the International Hotel Group they could keep their points and that I wanted nothing more to do with them.

As far as I was concerned, they could flush their £8.75p’s worth of apology down the toilet.

There is something seriously wrong with the International Hotel Group’s award scheme. And as to their guest relationships policies go, well, frankly, they stink.

I’m aware that the International group has a new managing director, and she may well have brought with her the guest relations team and the plethora of senior managers that now manage the International Hotel Group’s worldwide portfolio of hotels.

One must suspect that they all previously worked for Ryanair.