Hotel Branka

Hotel Branka is a great place, in a fantastic village. It is an old building, very well restored and decorated, cozy and honest regarding pricing. Even the breakfast was convenient and good. We recommend it!

What is a hotel's most serious responsibility? Surely, it is the safety of its clientele. Upon our recent stay at this hotel, we were saddened to find that the staff failed in this most basic responsibility. Our stay at the hotel had been smooth and uneventful. I noticed after the cleaners had been in that an unfinished packet of biscuits had gone missing. Obviously, it's no big deal and I didn't think anything of it. However, the next morning I awoke and reached down for my prescription medication that I had left, as I always do, by the side of my bed. I was surprised to find it missing, and after a thorough search around the room and our luggage, it became pretty clear that it had gone the way of the biscuits. My partner went down to reception to inform the staff of the situation. However, all she received was a fairly indifferent response, with staff members immediately going into a defensive mode and explaining that they take nothing but rubbish out of the rooms. The prescription medication was in a paper pharmacy bag that looked a little tattered, so clearly the cleaner saw it and binned it, not bothering to check inside it or look at the writing on the side of the bag that said "PRESCRIPTION" or the big green crosses printed beside it. I don't entirely blame the cleaner though. Surely, the most serious, important instruction that a hotel can give to its cleaners is "DO NOT BIN PRESCRIPTION MEDICINES". This would seem an appropriate measure to prevent the kinds of things that happen when someone doesn't take the medication their doctor has prescribed them, often as a lifeline. "Things that happen", such as (and of course this is no exaggeration) severe sickness and even death. But given the reaction of the staff to the situation, it seems clear that the safety of their clients is held as being of no great importance, so it's hardly surprising that the cleaners would do something like this, and would never have been informed to take precautions such as ensuring not to bin someone's medication. Fortunately, we were returning home the next day, and we were able to obtain enough medication from the nearby pharmacy, the pharmacist there giving it to us purely on the basis of kindness. If it hadn't been for her kindness, the situation would have been very distressing and potentially dangerous. Despite the hotel being otherwise perfectly adequate, the safety of clients is undoubtedly the most important thing that a hotel can provide, and overrides everything else. Unfortunately, the fact that the hotel wasn't able to provide this leads me to this score.