Scottish Euros fan ‘sent to stay in abandoned medical facility’

By Elizabeth Haigh

22:45 16 Jun 2024, updated 01:03 17 Jun 2024

A Scottish football fan’s ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to the Euros turned into a nightmare after the £2,000 holiday through Booking.com left him with beds made out of cardboard before being sent to stay in an ‘abandoned medical facility’.

Glaswegian Rory Bradley, 28, travelled to Germany for the Euros with three friends but says they turned up at the property they had booked to find it was ‘an absolute mess’, and then walked to replacement housing that was ‘something out of a murder film’.

He claims an agent at Booking.com arranged alternative accommodation for the group in the middle of the night, meaning they had to walk across the city in the early hours of the morning.

But on arrival they discovered they had been sent to a ‘dungeon’ complete with hospital beds, chemicals and building materials.

He and his friends spent hours on the phone to the firm, only to then have to find their own alternative place to stay.

Having spent £2,000 on the trip to see Scotland play – not including flights and spending money – the group have now had to fork out another £1,000 between them to secure safe accommodation.

Speaking to MailOnline, Rory said the whole experience was a ‘nightmare’. 

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‘We started saving up for this trip when Scotland first qualified,’ he said.

‘The first place we stayed was really nice. Then we arrived in Düren and the place we had booked was a mess.

‘We were on the phone for three hours and eventually they said they would find us somewhere.’

Rory claimed the Booking.com agent told the group one of the firms accommodation providers in the region had agreed to allow them to stay in new housing which was not on its site, or on any other rental site.

But when they traipsed across the city to reach it, the group were left terrified by what they found.

Videos shared by Rory show a dark room filled with pieces of wood, hospital-style bed frames and industrial equipment which includes a kiln-style oven.

A narrow set of stairs leads to tiled rooms filed with construction equipment, pipes and even tools including an axe.

A corridor has an open space off it which has been converted into a living room with a sofa and table and chairs, with a bed seemingly abandoned at the other end of a dark and otherwise unfurnished hallway.

A door then leads to a shower area, with a storage cupboard that is bare concrete aside for pipes, and has containers of paint and chemicals inside. 

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The main room contains a kitchen and three single beds crammed together, with bare concrete ceilings throughout.

Some of the doors appeared to be solid metal, and lights on the wall also had exposed cables.

‘Literally six feet into the property and there was this massive axe lying around,’ Rory said.

‘The front door didn’t lock. We felt so unsafe. There were dozens of hospital beds and all these tools which could do serious damage to a person.

‘We said there is no way we could stay there. We phoned up Booking.com again but a different agent said it wasn’t company policy to source replacement accommodation.

‘They wanted us to find some and then they would refund us up to £900. But of course the price of accommodation has shot up now.

‘We’re all working class lads. One of my pals has £39 left in his bank account. We don’t have the money to pay for a hotel.’

Rory and his friends managed to find a hostel to stay in until they move onto the next city on their tour. But all four friends are sharing one room, and Rory says it has cost them double the price of the original place they booked.

To add insult to injury, he says Booking.com staff told them to contact family and friends and ask them for money in order to be able to pay the cost of alternative accommodation.

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‘I just don’t understand how Booking.com could say they were able to find us new accommodation but then were unable to do so a few hours later,’ Rory said.

‘We just felt so unsafe. I can’t imagine how a group of women or young people would have felt arriving to that – it was like something out of a horror film.’ 

Taking to social media on Sunday, Rory said he is ‘not normally one to post customer service complaints’ but felt as if he had no choice after the ‘absolute shambles’.

Describing the initial property they had booked, Rory said: ‘The place was an absolute mess. 

‘One of the beds was made out of cardboard and also held together by duct tape. The second bed was a sofa bed that was broken and disgusting.’

He claimed the group spent three hours on the phone before being offered an alternative place to stay.

Rory continued: ‘So at around 12:30am we walked across the city to the new digs.

‘Once we arrived, we were STUNNED by what we found. Booking.com had sent us to a dungeon that must have been some sort of abandoned medical facility as there was hospital beds and industrial equipment lying around the entrance.

‘We made our way into the property and we’re greeted by more industrial equipment, exposed chemicals, exposed cables and exposed pipes and to top it all off an axe that looked like something out of a murder film. 

‘The whole place had the vibes of a human trafficking horror film.’

Rory added: ‘To top it all off the front door wouldn’t lock and there was absolutely no chance we were going to sleep here so we phoned Booking.com and spent two hours on the phone, only to be told that the only way to resolve the issue would be for us to pay for a new place and invoice them.

‘This is after Booking.com had paid for the dungeon that we were currently sitting in. We have spent over £2000 on accommodation through them for this trip and now they expect us to pay more and wait for a refund when we don’t have the money to pay now.’

Booking.com has been contacted for comment.