Episode 9

When Jan Jones from Porthcawl was looking for somewhere to stay in the Welsh capital for a friend’s birthday, she settled on the Big Sleep Hotel in Cardiff. But the state of her room shocked her. “There were empty food containers in there, there were empty beer bottles, the mattress was exposed and it was stained. The bathroom was filthy dirty. It was just shocking.” 

Jan is one of a number of guests at the hotel who have spoken to X-Ray about poor levels of cleanliness in their rooms. Becky from Hay-on-Wye discovered blood stains on her bathroom wall, while Josh from Staffordshire found a huge brown stain on his duvet. “I hate to think what it was,” he told us. When Lina from Greece found body hair from previous guests in her bathroom, she took matters into her own hands after being told there were no other rooms available. “I went to the convenience store and took some cleaning products myself and cleaned the room. I felt disappointed, I felt disgust, I felt deceived.”

When X-Ray reporter Omar booked a room at the Big Sleep to investigate further, he uncovered a whole host of hygiene horrors, including a heavily stained bed sheet and mattress, body hairs on the bedding and in the bin, and thick mould growing on the inside of the bathroom window sill with a dead insect in the middle of it. 

The hotel’s management has apologised and admitted these 'lapses in quality' are unacceptable. They have offered to refund all the unhappy guests we featured, and have promised to take action to improve their housekeeping. They also say they're confident the hotel will be 'transformed' once their current refurbishment is complete.

Kasha Minor, a lecturer in hospitality at Cardiff Metropolitan University, has some useful advice for anyone who checks into a hotel room and finds it’s not up to scratch. “First of all go downstairs and complain before you use anything at all,” she says. “That way you’re giving the hotel the chance to rectify what’s been going wrong. If they put it right it and it’s all fine then you’ll have to pay because you’ve used a service. But if you don’t complain straight away don’t expect to get any money off.”

Caerphilly’s Community Learning Disabilities team had been looking forward to their Christmas party all year.

At £68 a head their ‘under the sea’ themed party in Cardiff wasn’t going to be cheap, but they’d started saving in January to make it more affordable.

They booked through an agent called Office Christmas, also known as Office Events, and last month they paid their final balance, meaning they’d handed over more than £1,700 in total.

However, a couple of weeks later they received a shock – an email arrived stating the company had stopped trading.

The team then turned to the company hosting the event – Best Parties Ever – but they also had bad news. Best Parties Ever told them they’d only been given the group’s deposit and they’d have to pay the remaining balance again if they wanted to go to the party.

The team couldn’t afford to do that, so turned to X-Ray for help.

We tried to contact Office Events Ltd - but their website no longer exists and we didn’t receive a reply to our email.

Best Parties Ever told us they've also lost a significant amount of money because of this, and are urging people who booked with a credit card to try to get a refund through their credit card company.

And, after we got in touch, they offered everybody who’d paid by bank transfer or cheque a 50% discount on their outstanding balance if they can provide proof of payment.

What should you do to ensure your Christmas tree stays looking great into the new year? Lucy met Rob Morgan, who grows Christmas trees in Gower, Swansea, for some top tips:

1. Don't buy too early - wait until December. You need to go somewhere that's selling fresh trees - you can see how fresh they are as they smell nice and look green and lush. The key to a good tree generally is the weight of the tree – if you can lift it up too easily it means there's no moisture in it. It might look good when you buy it, but in a couple of weeks it will just be needles on the floor.

2. You don’t need to spend a lot of money. A Nordman fur is your classic non-drop tree, which would cost about £35. But for a Norway Spruce, a traditional tree, you're looking at half the price.

3. Once you get your tree home, it’s a good idea to cut a little bit off the bottom. That will stimulate the tree to start drinking water again. Put the tree in a very good tree stand that holds a lot of water. Try not to put it next to under-floor heating, a radiator or a fire - you've got to treat the trees like cut flowers because they'll just dry out straight away.