Unwise: Bosses of the Britannia Royal Hotel in Hull cancelled a booking for a group of homeless people on the basis of a telephone call that they did not verify.

What can we say about the owners and managers of the Britannia Royal Hotel in Hull, after they cancelled a booking that would have given 28 homeless people a place to stay during Christmas?

Members of the public have been making their feelings known with an influx of negative reviews on the hotel’s TripAdvisor page (all now deleted) and on its Facebook page, which has also been deleted.

Non-profit community organisation Raise the Roof paid £1,092 for 14 rooms, to be used on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – but the hotel cancelled the booking – initially without explanation.

Fortunately, it seems another hotel was less squeamish about taking money to provide people with a room for a couple of nights.

The Doubletree by Hilton stepped in to offer its services – free of charge:

https://twitter.com/Dazzaroon/status/1074688913103642627

And the offer has been accepted:

https://twitter.com/EMDKelly/status/1074643813329747968

As for the Britannia Royal: It did provide an explanation, eventually. Apparently somebody who claimed to be at a similar event organised by Raise the Roof at the Ibis Hotel in the city last year had contacted that hotel with a horror story – one that was not true, as you can read on the Raise the Roof Facebook page:

So it seems Raise the Roof – and the homeless people it was trying to help – were the victims of a hoax by somebody with an axe to grind.

Well, their plan backfired because the practical result is that the homeless people got rooms at a better hotel – and Raise the Roof’s GoFundMe crowdfunding page has received a huge influx of funding.

And for the Britannia Royal, the moral of the story is clear:

Always check the authenticity of allegations – it would not have been hard to contact Raise the Roof or Ibis. Failure to do so can cause serious harm to your own business.

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