Having previously enjoyed a stay at the Tormaukin Inn a few years ago, I recently tried to book a room there in order to extend a midweek trip in Scotland in May. I consulted the hotel’s website and found that there was a booking enquiry form which I duly completed and submitted. When I had heard nothing from them by the following afternoon, I tried calling them via phone. Their website provides two contact numbers – both of which are mobile numbers. I tried both numbers a number of times and each time the call went to voicemail. There was no landline number provided, although a Google search enabled me to find a landline number for the Tormaukin but upon trying that number, I got an automated answer which stated that the number was not recognised. I tried emailing, using the email address on their website and got no response to that either. This seemed to me like a very strange approach to encouraging and attracting business – to simply ignore all methods of contact. I resorted to checking to see if the hotel had a Facebook page and discovered that indeed it did, so I sent a message to their page to explain that I had been trying to contact them - without success - and indicated which date I was looking for. I waited to see if there would be any response to that. Whilst waiting, I then had the idea of looking at the *********** website where I discovered that the hotel did indeed have several rooms available on the date I wanted, so I went ahead and booked the room type that I wanted. Some hours later I did eventually get a response from the Tormaukin – to my Facebook message only. They apologised for not responding to my attempt to contact them, stating that the hotel had not been open to the public for the preceding few days, although quite what that has to do with ignoring phone calls, emails and booking enquiries, I am genuinely not sure. It was then explained that the date I had requested was not available because they were “already fully booked for an exclusive-use stay”. I messaged back and said that I hoped this was not the case, because I had just successfully booked a room via *********** whilst waiting to hear back from the hotel. Several hours later, I received a reply, blaming Bookings.com’s calendar system and requesting me to “cancel my booking”. If I had simply gone ahead and made the booking with Bookings.com in the first place it appears likely that we would have turned up at the Tormaukin on our chosen date and the room that we had booked would not have been available. If however, the Tormaukin had opted to be professional and proactive about their business and had responded to my various attempt to contact them, all of this needless inconvenience could have been avoided. I don’t believe I have ever encountered such disinterest, difficulty and incompetence when attempting to book an overnight hotel stay. If indeed there has been a communication breakdown between the hotel and Bookings.com, then that is unfortunate but there