Hotel - to review or not review

[Bromdad]

We have just spent a night in an independent hotel, 2 adults and a 13 year old. 4 stars although cheaper than 4 star price, booked through one of the big online booking sites. We were attracted to the excellent reviews with pretty much nothing negative.

The hotel is in a pair of large converted houses - right next to each other but you go outside to get between the two. Our room was in the smaller house without a reception desk. The room was good, as per reviews etc.

There were however 2 problems. Firstly, there was very poor soundproofing both through walls and doors. Our room was downstairs and just off the entrance hallway. We could hear noise from several other rooms and our room door rattled every time someone came or left.

The biggest problem was that one of the rooms was clearly being used by a drug dealer. He was outside the hotel talking loudly on his phone each time we came and left and through the night, there was a steady stream of male visitors that this person met at the door and allowed in to the hotel. Each time there would loud talking right outside our paper thin door. This probably happened 30 times and did not stop until after 5am. It was impossible to sleep, we could not leave as we had both had a couple of glasses of wine , it would have been impossible to make a phone call without being overhead and confronting this person would have been potentially very dangerous. It was awful.

So, would it be fair to mention the second problem in an online review? We would not have booked had we read anything about drug dealing in a review but this might be a total one off.

YANBU - fair to mention.

YABU - not the hotels fault, unfair to mention.

Thankyou!

What has the hotel said? I would speak with them first and decide afterwards depending on how they deal with the situation.

You should have informed them at the time you were unhappy. Unless the drug dealer lives at the hotel what use is a review mentioning this.
If nobody informs hotels of problems how can they rectify things they might not be aware of.

Have you spoken to the hotel first, @Bromdad ?

It would have been impossible to inform the hotel at the time without being exposed to the risk of being seen by those involved in drug dealing. The hotel is very small.

We are about to.

I’d speak to the hotel first

if they don’t offer you anything and/or don’t care then yes I would give an honest review

I think it’s not good form to go straight to poor review without seeing if the hotel can put it right somehow

The set up as you describe it means that the hotel could not be aware of this unless someone let them know. So I think it would be really unfair to mention in a review- you should call & let them know.

However if when you let them know they belittle your concerns (or if they say anything that suggests they in fact knew about what was going on) - then that fact would be legitimate to mention in a review.

All you need to say is that the sound proofing was poor and that you were disturbed by noise from other rooms and outside.
You are overthinking it!

I think some things are reasonable to mention without raising it with the hotel.

Eg the soundproofing - there’s nothing that can be done about that, it’s not a “well if you’d mentioned it we’d have fixed it” situation.
And the man - I think mentioning that the security of the hotel in the second house where there is no reception doesn’t seem sufficient is a perfectly reasonable review.

Is this a hotel or more of an airbnb situation?

I’d report the drug dealing to the police not that they’ll do anything about it

No, it's definitely a hotel. Has a reception desk (although not 24h), proper rooms etc. It's just been converted from two large city outskirts houses.

There are two issues which the hotel could reasonably be expected to control.

sound issues and security.

both of which appear to be subpar.

I don't understand why you couldn't have rung reception at the time or walked across to the other building with the reception desk.

There is nobody on reception in the middle of the night. It would have been impossible to go to the other building without it being obvious to those involved in drug dealing what we were doing.

I’d mention security and sound proofing, you’ll probably find if you mention drug dealing it won’t get accepted by the reviewing websites. Ring po,ice and hotel about drug dealing if you want or move on as the drug dealer probably has too..

If you thought a crime was in progress you should have called 999.

You should also have spoken to hotel management as soon as possible as well as the police so any CCTV coverage could be retained, car reg noted etc.

As PP, you can leave a review pointing out the poor soundproofing in your wing.

Why couldn't you ring the contact number?

Couldn't you have spoken to reception in the morning when you checked out?

I write reviews often and try to give a balance of good/not so good things, so I'd mention the lack of soundproofing. I'd see what the hotel's response is though, but that man might have only been staying there 1 night?

But the fundamental issue, which seems to be the lack of decent security at the hotel, isnt a one night thing and is something that is valid to mention I think.

Speak to the hotel first and take it from there. If you decide to leave a review, make sure you can’t be identified by any undesirables.