A Scottish hotel has had its five-star status suspended after the owner made homophobic comments.

Stewart Spence, owner of the Marcliffe Hotel in the north-eastern Scottish city of Aberdeen, reportedly left guests stunned when he made anti-gay remarks.

During a speech at his hotel last Thursday (20 October), he reportedly said he was ‘lucky’ to never have hired a gay employee and also made offensive remarks about John Travolta.

‘The room went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Not one person defended him afterwards,’ an anonymous guest told STV.

‘It’s a shame that the dinner was about emerging talent in our industry and he was making a statement that there are certain people we don’t welcome – which is not true.’

Spence, who is good friends with Donald Trump, immediately apologized the following day, calling the comments ‘ill-advised’ and describing himself as ‘mortified’.

‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ the email reads according to STV.

‘I was hoping to raise a few laughs around the seventies theme and while the words I used may have, regrettably, been commonplace in that generation, they were still entirely unacceptable.’

Now the hotel, which is a member of VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance (QA) scheme, has had its five-star status suspended and been removed from the agency’s website.

‘We have advised the hotel that their membership of QA and listing on the website is suspended until such time as we have received written evidence that they do not operate a discriminatory policy with staff and customers and that they both fully understand and meet, in full, the requirements of appropriate legislation,’ a spokesperson for VisitScotland told STV.

‘We have also advised them of training and support available through organisations such as Stonewall.’

The measures will stay in place until the hotel provides written evidence that they don’t discriminate in any form.