Edinburgh, MacDonald Holyrood Hotel

Overnight stay at the McDonald Holyrood Hotel

To celebrate our anniversary on 11th May 2013, we booked tickets to see Derren Brown at the Playhouse theatre in Edinburgh. To make this day even more special we booked overnight accommodation at the Holyrood Hotel

We would like to timeline the following events so that our experience can be described and understood more fully.

10:45 am – We arrived at the hotel and were extremely happy that in fact a room was ready for us so we could leave our luggage and head off into Edinburgh for shopping.

1:30 pm – We arrived back at the hotel feeling a bit tired and looking forward to a sleep before going out in the evening.

1.35 pm – My wife got into bed and was instantly alarmed by the feeling of wetness underneath the duvet cover. We immediately peeled back the sheet and the mattress was visibly soaking and the substantial wet area had brownish edges and smelled like urine. My wife was very upset and felt extremely dirty as her body and nightclothes were contaminated. She then immediately called reception and was advised that the duty manager would be with us shortly..

2.00 pm – After what was a long period the duty manager appeared and although she did apologise it did not seem sincere as she was more concerned about how the stain got there rather than my wife’s welfare. She advised that we would be moved and she left and said she would be back shortly

2.30 pm – The duty manager appeared back in our room with a colleague who looked at the stain and suggested that the mark maybe was water based...This coupled with comments of ‘we don’t know how room service would have missed this’ and ’no-one had stayed in the room the evening before’ seemed to insinuate that we had something to do with it. This caused us to feel really angry and my wife burst into tears. Remember, this will have been now around an hour and my wife had not had the opportunity to clean herself. The duty manager left us a key for another room and we headed up there.

2.40 pm – We reached our alternative accommodation and guess what the room had not been serviced from the evening before.

2.45 pm – We immediately grabbed our luggage and headed down to reception where we spoke again to the female duty manager. Her first reaction when we told her about the new room was again negative and defensive towards us as she said that she had inspected the room herself and it was ok. On further investigation, it transpired that we were given the wrong room keys. A new male duty manager appeared, apologised and took our luggage up to the room while we received a free drink. Had we not already booked the theatre we would have walked out of the hotel and went back home to Fife

3.00 pm – We entered the new room which was ok thankfully. My wife then had her shower (approx an hour and a half after the event) and we then had to get ready to go out for the evening so no planned rest!!.

In Summary, my wife and myself spend many long weekends away from home in both the UK and Abroad and we have NEVER experienced anything like this. This is also the first time we have stayed in a MacDonalds hotel.

Whilst we were offered a free drink and a complimentary taxi into town, We feel that our complaint did not receive the attention it certainly warranted as your staff did not seem as concerned as we believe they should have been. We are also disappointed that we were not contacted in the evening or the next morning to enquire if everything was now ok.

We have now received our money back ONLY after a letter of complaint and we have now booked other accommodation. We felt that we should have received more compensation bearing in mind what we experienced and that the company should have bent over backwards but unfortunately they did not which shows us that they thought of the situation.

We will NEVER be back in that hotel and we give them 1 star only for their breakfast.....