The staff are unfailingly friendly and clearly hard-working, a combination that becomes easier to explain once you notice how thinly stretched they are across the number of guests they’re covering.
Rooms run smaller than advertised, the trade-off for an entrance foyer built into the floor plan. The ceilings are dramatically high, an effect somewhat offset by air conditioning that can’t settle on a temperature, cycling between too warm and too cold. Ground floor rooms sit close enough to neighbouring buildings that anyone there can see straight in through the high windows, so the blackout blinds stay drawn, at which point the room takes on the atmosphere of a cave. The building’s age announces itself through a persistent damp smell in the bedroom.
The bathroom is well appointed, if you don’t mind slippery tiles and a shower door that doesn’t open past a bath towel, so the step from shower to floor is taken on equally slick ground. Be careful. The extractor fan is loud enough to make sleep impossible.
Breakfast is adequate.
Some small hotels treat the guest experience as the whole business. Others seem to bank on guests never returning, and price their conduct accordingly. Here, assurances given warmly at the desk may be withdrawn by management once you’ve checked out, “hotel policy” trumping whatever you were told and relied upon. A pleasant stay, provided you keep one eye on the bill, but offering poor value for money, given the ambience of tension created by management.