200 asylum seekers put up at four-star hotel near Mount Snowdon – costing taxpayers £6.8m
AROUND 200 asylum seekers are being put up at a four-star hotel in a Welsh village with just 400 residents.
The Hilton Garden Inn’s 106 rooms, usually advertised for around £160 a night, are booked until spring in a move costing taxpayers £6.8million.
Picturesque Dolgarrog, nestling in a nature reserve the foothills of Snowdonia, has just a post office, two shops, a restaurant and a cafe.
The only pub is inside the Hilton.
The migrants arrived in three coaches on Sunday evening.
They are thought to have been transferred from overcrowded detention centres on the Kent coast, 300 miles away.
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Two community support police officers were outside the local primary school at home time on Tuesday.
Some of the migrants have been seen clutching rolled up £10 notes.
One asked a stunned local: “Where’s the money exchange?”
It is understood some agency staff at the hotel have been told their employment is now terminated.
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Wedding celebrations and a hen-do have had to be cancelled along with bookings for Christmas dinner.
Simon Pritchard, 31, and his bride Lucy Campbell, 28, were given a refund and told in a Zoom meeting that they had only days to find an alternative venue for their wedding.
Lucy said: “If we can’t find one, we will have to cancel. We were gobsmacked.”
Mum of one Rachel Roberts, 50, told The Sun: “I’m shocked the migrants have been put here. They are all adult men. They belong in a city, not a village in Wales.”
Dad of three John Williamson, 47, said: “This is a small village and we cannot cope. We weren’t told a thing. They just suddenly arrived.”
The Home Office said it used the hotel only as a “short-term solution”.
But according to its booking site, the hotel is closed to the public for at least another five months.
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The Hilton declined to comment
Artificial surfing reef Adventure Parc Snowdonia opened nearby in 2015 with £4million of Welsh Government funding.
