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A ‘fed up’ hotelier has responded to negative TripAdvisor reviews of his hotel after being annoyed at the ‘customer is always right’ attitude.
Paul Chatwin, manager of the Royal Clarence Hotel in Burnham-on-Sea, has taken to the review site to reply to guests’ feedback with his version of events.
Telling one guest that he was “not here to be nice to every guest”, Chatwin said: “Writing back is the only way for a hotelier to challenge what has been said, or to be honest.”
In response to a review where the guests complained about the hotel’s six off-street parking spaces, Chatwin said: “Unfortunately, when they built the hotel in 1796 they didn’t include enough car parking spaces.”
In another review, he said he would “make no apology” and would tell guests they are “muppets” if they were “unruly”. He also replied to another review claiming a guest blackmailed him with the threat of a bad review.
The 19-room hotel has a 3.5-star rating on TripAdvisor and 193 reviews. Some 22% of the reviews rate the property as excellent, 32% rate is as very good while 17% rate it as terrible.
He added: “I’m just really fed up with the PC and ‘customer is always right’ type of argument. The customer isn’t always right and we’re not always right but there must be a level playing field and we have got to treat each other with respect. But if they go too far then it’s only fair we should correct them if they have something wrong.”
