HOTEL guests were moved to new rooms after being kept awake through the night by festive tunes blaring out from a shopping centre's musical Christmas tree.
Visitors at the Royal Highland Hotel in Inverness were found alternative accommodation after the cone-shaped tree, outside the Eastgate Shopping Centre, burst into song every 20 minutes. One mother said her four-year-old son was still being kept awake by the music at 5am yesterday, not having slept a wink.
Staff at the hotel contacted the shopping centre and Highland Council after numerous complaints from guests.
A hotel spokeswoman said: "It was going off every 20 minutes for two or three minutes at a time.
"Some of our windows are only about 20 feet away from the tree. We moved as many people as we could until we ran out of [empty] rooms."
Eastgate Centre manager Jacquie Keddie said a timer meant to switch off the "sound and light tree" at 11pm may not have worked and engineers have reprogrammed the tree to be silent from 8pm until 6.30am.
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