MedusaAlli
We stayed here for three nights and had an okay stay. In summary, the staff were very pleasant but the whole hotel could do with a major overhaul and the bedroom was most definitely not luxurious. Given the price point and glossy online adverts, it just did not the meet expectations created by their website. On the surface the hotel looked quite plush with a black and purple colour scheme throughout. But, in the bedroom, the black painted crocodile skin design wallpaper, really weird leatherette tiles on the ceiling and black flat-pack furniture made it feel like a cheap set from a Hugh Hefner photoshoot in the early 90s.||Best points:|1. Very good communication prior to arrival and friendly check-in staff (Yasmin).|2. Great air conditioning inside the room.|3. Free off street parking (but spaces are limited).|4. Good location 20 minutes’ walk from the river/bustling area of town.|5. The hotel had no double rooms left when we booked (only a twin) so, at our request, the hotel zip-locked the two twin beds together (with a topper) so we had a nice large king-size bed to share.|6. The room had a fridge which was a welcome sight in the middle of high summer. However, we did have to switch it off at night as it made an irritating clicking sound which kept us awake.||Bad points:|1. The bed was comfortable, although unlike the photos on the website, there was no headboard (room 6). I’m assuming this was because the twin beds had been zip-locked together and the headboards couldn’t be? But the pillows were wafer thin and had no pillow protectors (just thin badly fitting pillow cases); definitely nothing like the plush and plumped-up luxurious looking ones in the photos on the website. Reception did provide two additional thin pillows on request, but the hard thin pillows and lack of a headboard made the room feel a bit down market.|2. The en-suite was the tiniest shower room I have ever used – imagine a converted cupboard. The 80cm x 80cm shower cubicle was akin to taking a shower in a phone booth. It was impossible for anyone bigger than a small child to bend down to wash their legs or feet. This was such a shame as there was space for a wider fitment inside the room, but it felt as if the hotel had just skimped on the size and opted for the cheapest (smallest) option available.|3. The showerhead holder on the rail was broken, so the showerhead kept slipping down to the bottom of the rail – poor maintenance.|4. The shower cubicle sealant was discoloured and had started to go mouldy, so could do with replacing.|5. The top of the wardrobe was coated in thick dust.|6. There was particularly poor sound insulation between rooms; you could hear other guests’ conversations/TVs quite clearly.|7. Water from an upstairs bathroom flowed down inside a boxed-in soil pipe that was located in the corner of our bedroom, just two feet from our bed. As the guests above us showered or used the toilet in the middle of the night, the gushing water was quite an intrusive sound whilst we were trying to sleep.||Other points that should be improved:|1. The décor really needs an overhaul as the old silver light switches were wonky and tarnished and a couple of areas of the walls were rough lumpy plaster that had been thickly painted over (not a professional job). We also had water isolation taps located half way up the wall in our room that had been painted over and really should have been boxed in.|2. There were no visible electric sockets next to the bed (surprising for a hotel at this price point). We had to plug our phones in to charge overnight on the other side of the room, which meant we had to get up out of bed to switch off our phone alarms in the morning.|3. There were no USB sockets anywhere in the room, something which should be pretty standard in a hotel room in this day and age (especially at this price point).|4. The TV was tiny.|5. The WiFi was a bit hit and miss, as we had to keep re-signing in.|6. The bedroom door was badly fitted, with light coming in around the doorframe from the landing all night long. This badly fitted door also did nothing to quell the noise of people chatting outside on the landing (especially when one particularly disrespectful guest hollered to their friend from one end of the corridor to the other).|7. The toilet seat had missing buffers – poor maintenance.|8. There was no shelf in the bathroom to put a wash bag – poor planning.|9. The drains gurgled every time you flushed the toilet or used a tap in the bathroom – bad plumbing.|10. Some of the bathroom fittings were put on upside down and the towel rail was very loose.|11. There was the overpowering smell of air freshener everywhere. A day after getting home my suitcase still had the aroma inside.|12. The garden was a bit of a waste of time. The grass needed cutting and there was no direct access back to/from the hotel bar without negotiating a particularly narrow alleyway past staff members who were smoking outside – it made us feel as if they really didn’t want anyone walking down there. The garden was not the welcoming area we were led to believe it would be from the adverts online, so it’s probably best if the hotel doesn’t mention it in its promotions.|13. The floorboards were very creaky, especially the ones in the bedroom above our heads.
