my husband and i always stay in marco polo whenever we are in hk, and that is like 2-3 times a year. last may (2010), my husband booked 2 nights in the hotel, and instead of getting our usual favorite room in the club floor, he opted to avail of the promo being offered since he will only stay for 2 nights and without me and the kids. upon getting there, he was given room 413. after the first night, he started to notice some redness on his legs, which he brushed off as they might simply be minor irritations. when he left the hotel and came home to manila after 2 days, the “minor irritations” had flared up, causing his ENTIRE left leg to swell. he went to see a doctor and he confirmed that they were bites from bed bugs and what he had was already an infection. my husband went through something short of a surgery, requiring a localized anesthesia shot on the leg area just so the doctor could work on removing the (sorry for the sensitive readers) PUS form the wounds. the doctor even prescribed antibiotics for my husband to completely quell the infection.

anyway, when all of this was happening, i was in the U.S. and my husband kept it from me so i will not worry. he only told me the story when i got back, which was already a month after. so even if i thought of writing a complaint to the management of marco polo, it would have been too late and it would have been better if we had pictures to support our claims.

also, i didn’t see any post about marco polo’s response to your letter or action towards the problem. was there any? or maybe you had another post about it? i just want to know what the hotel has done about this, especially since your case was already a year old.

hope you can reply to my query. thank you again.

“We find it odd that as we had such a fantastic stay at the Gateway, which made this trip indeed truly remarkable, conversely a friend who owns a travel agency brought to our attention a recent development regarding an awful experience in the same hotel. We had read that blog.

We must say, that must have been a totally isolated incident if it were even true at all. I mean what is the probability that of all the quests that are currently booked at that hotel only their room (or the 3 rooms their group occupied) would be infested with bedbugs while the rest of the hotel stayed clean and without incident? The most probable scenario is that the previous guest occupying the room or the adjacent one brought the bug to the room. If you check Wikipedia, the properties of bedbugs are to hide, climb onto walls or ceilings after they infest. So even if Marco Polo Gateway had changed the linen daily, the bedbugs (brought by the previous foreign guest) had remained on the wall and stayed day after day including during their stay, again if it were true at all.

We feel that Marco Polo Gateway as one body shouldn’t be blamed or their reputation tarnished at all. For all everyone knows, it was them who inadvertently brought the bugs to the room.

Personally… hands down we’d still recommend this hotel should anyone need to head to HK for business or pleasure!”