So we booked The Grand as we were running the Brighton Half, and on check in asked if we could pay for a late check out, we only needed an hour to have a quick shower before a 4 hour journey home, but were told there was a blanket ‘no’ to any late check out requests as there would probably be lots of other people requesting the same. After some discussion, we gave up as the receptionist couldn’t even tell us if there was going to be a room free to use the next morning for runners, (usually is) and has been told we’d have to book an extra night if we wanted to check out late. We got to our room, and I did a quick search on hotels.com just to see how much an extra night would be and it came up at £86…so we went back downstairs and spoke to the concierge (couldn’t face the unhelpful receptionist again) and said we could get a room for another night for £86, but wouldn’t it be easier if we just paid the hotel £40 to stay an extra hour? But nope, the concierge was as bad if not worse than the receptionist…he made a point of saying that if we booked another night, we may have to check out at 11, and check back in at 3pm!!! I thought he was joking, but no he was deadly serious…at this point I was losing the will to live, how unhelpful can people be in a 5 star hotel! In the end we just booked it as we had no choice, but finally found a more helpful colleague that managed to ensure we had the same room. The last straw was housekeeping coming to clean the room at 1:30pm! Just awful!!