HotelChatter

I stayed at the Pembridge Palace Hotel, located at 55 Prince's Square, London, W24PX (telephone number ------) earlier this month, from Thursday 8th September through Monday 12th September.

Though the hotel was a bit small, and the triple room very cramped, it seemed clean enough superficially (except perhaps the towels, which smelled awful), but then I was to discover that there was more to the hotel under the surface. On the night of Saturday 10th September, I went to bed in a perfect state of health and nothing to report in terms of dermatological problems.

When I woke up on the morning of Sunday 11th September, my body was absolutely covered with bites that appear to be consistent with bedbug or flea bites (as my dermatologist has also told me). This is most probably the source of the bites, because I was clothed with pajamas and the windows were closed entirely due to the cold (thereby excluding mosquitoes, which could not get into the covers of a bed and through the pajamas anyway).

I woke up with dozens of bites, the majority of which were located on a straight line going all up my right arm, starting at the elbow and leading all the way to the middle of my back. Besides these terribly itchy bites, I also had many other isolated irritating bites on both hands, my other arm, both of my legs, both of my feet and even two on my face.

Whatever was inside the Pembridge Palace Hotel room that night practically ate me alive and made the whole rest of my stay in London an itching nightmare. I have photographs showing the huge number of bites I had all over, and shockingly the marks from them have not completely disappeared more than two weeks later.

When I attempted to complain to the management that morning, the receptionists at the front desk, though they were polite and allowed us to change rooms, never let me speak with a hotel manager.

On Sunday, they claimed there were no managers available on that day of the week, and then on Monday when I repeated my request, they said there were no managers that day either. According to them, a chambermaid inspected the room and "found nothing," but anyone working in a hotel should know that bedbugs cannot be found through a quick visual inspection. I am hoping that your Health and Safety Team staff can check the place out. We were staying in room 110.

My reason for writing to you is to formally complain that the hotel room which the Pembridge Palace had provided us with was completely unfit for human use. Either the bed or sheets on the single bed were obviously infested with something that needs to be fumigated (it was a triple room with a double bed and a single bed). And it would have been nice if the hotel could have offered something more than just a change of room and an apology from a lower-level employee to make up for the fact that my last two days (or in other words half of my stay) in London were a miserable nightmare of itching, scratching and bad moods, since I felt awful and looked disfigured on half my body. My whole arm and back looked as if I had some terrible disease, and I was very concerned that might have caught something.

I have written an e-mail letter to the hotel, as well, and they have not even bothered to send a response or an apology. I hope that you can investigate their premises and keep any other guests from suffering the same fate that I suffered at this disgusting, cramped hotel. If you want me to send you the photographs of the damage, I would be perfectly happy to.