Jenn M.
Yelp
I was really looking forward to my stay at The Bristol Hotel this was my first trip away from London in a while, the TripAdvisor reviews were really good and I have stayed in good hotels before so I expected my experience at The Bristol Hotel to be top-notch, especially with regards to all the great reviews it has.
I wish I had not paid attention to the reviews. Mind you, it is not horrible but it is certainly not an experience as one is led to believe, it failed to deliver on several levels.
The reception area is very nice, the check-in was straightforward and I was given a harbour-side room. When I entered the room I was greeted by an unpleasant, musty smell and a carpet that was covered with stains. My 'harbour view' was a bit of water glinting through the trees and the plug in the sink did not work.
Altogether, the room was not very inviting and I did not feel at home. The bathroom was small and there was not even a towel rail, the towels were kept under the sink. The desk surface was smudged and one of the glass lamps had a stain (of coffee? Or perhaps blood?) on it, which was nicely reflected on the glossy bedside table top. If I saw it at once the hotel staff should have seen it and cleaned the lamp.
The last straw was discovering that I had what seemed to be a hatch leading to attic space in the room and there was a big water stain around it. The door to the hatch was warped and did not fit properly.
First impressions: no effort was made to wow first time visitors, the room was quite shabby and I had been expecting a lot more.
So I went downstairs and asked for a new room. This was promptly dealt with but when I asked if there were really no other harbour-side rooms the receptionist said no and although she was polite her face said 'not that discussion again!'
Off to my new room this one had a much more favourable colour scheme and was altogether much more inviting. The carpet was clean. The smell of room freshener was overpowering. The bathroom had a towel rack!
The storage space for clothes was very modest, only one shelf and a rack to hang things on. I preferred to keep my belongings in my suitcase.
Once again, there were signs of neglect the drain in the bath was clogged; I was standing in water up to my calves when I showered and part of the desk was damaged. Ideally, things like this should be repaired at once or else a hotel will quickly become run down. From what I saw The Bristol Hotel is on its way to becoming run down very soon if it does not work harder to e.g. keep carpets clean and fix things if they are broken.
The breakfast was ok no more and no less, with a selection of food that is standard for any hotel from 2 stars upwards. I was shown to my table in the very nice breakfast area and asked the standard questions, i.e. if I wanted tea or coffee and what kind of toast. By the time I had returned to my table the tea had been served but there was no sign of the toast. Fifteen minutes later and I had to ask a member of staff to get some toast for me, which he promptly did. There was only honey and no jam on my table and when I asked a member of staff for some jam he just went to an empty table and brought me one jar no selection of jams for me!
When I went back to my room the door key did not work so I had to go back down to reception. Yes I was checking out that day but check out time is 12 noon and it was just 9am. I was assured that my card would now work and went back upstairs only to discover that the card still refused to unlock my door. Fortunately, a member of the cleaning staff was kind enough to let me in my room and thus spare me a further trip to reception.
While checking out, I asked a member of reception about the best way to get a bus to a nearby city. The reply was that I would have to walk down to the bus station (a 15 minute walk) and ask there. Not really the service I would expect from an exceptional hotel and when I replied that my question had not really been answered the receptionist spent a few minutes trying to figure out which bus I could take from a stop that is perhaps not a 15 minute walk away. After a while I realised that it was going nowhere, gave up and walked to the train station, where a member of staff was glad to help me.
Now mind you, all of the above are ultimately minor mishaps but I have stayed in many hotels where I had not one of the above issues, i.e. the rooms were in good order, breakfast was excellent, staff was very helpful and there was a concierge to help with any queries.
What I am most disappointed about is how The Bristol Hotel failed to live up to the standards set by the many rave reviews on TripAdvisor. I am really disappointed because I was looking forward to a wonderful stay in a lovely hotel.
Maybe I just had an isolated bad experience or have been to better hotels than my fellow reviewers. Either way, the reason I am giving this hotel such a poor rating is not because it is