So at the weekend I'd gone off with the family (my wife & 3 young kids) for a couple of days. We'd thrown some clothes in a bag and had committed to staying somewhere for the night.
Got to around lunchtime and I figured I had a plan. Called the HI Telford (UK) which is an unremarkable property but it is very near Ironbridge Gorge - a World Heritage Site with lots of hands-on museums - and worth a visit if you're in the UK and interested in the industrial revolution.
So the HI could do us interconnecting rooms and had a pool (kids wanted to go swimming). I rock up at the hotel - lobby is pretty grim as they're refurb-ing the bar and it's been draped in off-white decorators sheets (classy...). As I'm checking in, I overhear another guest explaining to their child that they can't go swimming today because the pool is "fully booked".
Erm, what????
I ask the receptionist about this. Oh yes, was the rather nonchalant reply. It explains that on the website. But i'd booked over the phone. So they operate a system when the hotel is busy that you have to book a time to go swimming. We arrived at 4pm and they were full for the day, despite the hotel knocking out rooms at just £65.
For the record, the website says...
Make sure you visit Revive Leisure Club, book a beauty treatment, work out in the gym or plunge into the pool (booking system may be in place).
It also seems that the leisure club is a 3rd party operation, but hotel guests evidently only get what's left over.
Needless to say, I explained that I found the situation unacceptable and in all fairness, the hotel cancelled the booking there and then, despite me being past the cut-off. I returned to the car and called the Hyatt Regency in Birmingham where we where headed the next day. For about £20 more we were given great rooms in a hotel that had a lobby that didn't look like a building site, a swimming pool - and no inane booking system.
Like most on here I've stayed in literally hundreds of hotels of all brands all around the world. Some have had private pools, others have had public access deals via a health club but never in my days have I come across such a policy as this. Build the facilities to accommodate the guests, for goodness sake!
(yes, I do feel better now, thanks...)