"Everything was excellent apart from one issue: payment at check-in.
I had my card saved on Google Pay, so when it came to paying for my room, I expected there to be a card reader available. In my experience, 9 times out of 10 hotels have a card machine available for this, and this hotel did have card readers in the bar and restaurant.
Unfortunately, the member of staff dealing with my check-in made it very clear that my situation was an inconvenience to her. Rather than offering the option of using a card reader, she made a rather snide comment along the lines of, “How am I supposed to take your payment?”
She appeared to expect me to physically provide my card so that she could manually enter the card details into her computer.
What made this more frustrating was that on a previous occasion, when staying at the hotel with a colleague, the hotel had simply sent my colleague a payment link, which was a quick and straightforward way of resolving the issue.
I appreciate that there may be procedures around taking payment, but the way this was handled was unnecessary and left me feeling uncomfortable. There were clearly other options available, whether using a card reader or simply sending a payment link as had been done previously.
It’s a shame, as everything else about the hotel was very good. This interaction unfortunately put a dampener on an otherwise positive experience."