Hotel damage results in birthday bus ban

The St Magnus Bay Hotel in Hillswick has taken the decision to ban “party buses” after damage was caused to the hotel over the weekend.

The men’s toilets were trashed and a children’s ride-on toy car was broken on Saturday afternoon, and owner Andrea Manson said they had decided to stop serving visiting party buses and to offer afternoon teas on a Saturday instead.

Two members of the bus had left a “very precious” children’s ride-on car “laid in bits”, she said, and passengers on the bus had also “jumped on the toilet” in an attempt to take it off the wall.

The urinals were also blocked with batteries too, Ms Manson said.

She said that this was “normal behaviour for some of the party buses” and that this particular bus had “little respect for property and even less for staff”.

The latest incident had been “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, Ms Manson said, amid continued scrutiny over party buses in Shetland.

SIC councillor Stephen Leask controversially called for a by-law to be introduced to regulate the buses in February 2018, which was met with fierce opposition from young people on social media.

Ms Manson said more regulation was needed, citing previous examples of damage done to their hotel which included fire extinguishers being set off in their corridors and a “lovely, treasured” mandolin being stolen and destroyed on a bus.

Evidence of drug use had also been discovered after three bus-loads of people were in the hotel a few weekends ago, and Ms Manson said they had decided they had had enough.

“Basically every Saturday we say ‘is this really worth it?’, she said. “We’ve come to the conclusion ‘no’.”

Ms Manson said they had not received any apologies from anyone on the bus, but they expected the person responsible for the bus and those who broke the children’s car to come up to the hotel, apologise and to compensate them for the damage caused.

• More in this Friday’s edition of The Shetland Times.