Barnstaple Hotel Review Rooms with an Industrial View
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| Barnstaple Hotel |
We have reviewed this hotel on Trip Advisor and have now found suspicous reviews (after our review was posted) possibly from Hotel management/staff, that we decided to write a blog about our stay, this way the Barnstaple Hotel cannot influence our review in any way.
The suspicous reviews take all the negative reviews from August/September and address each point in favour of the Barnstaple Hotel.
This review is solely our own findings and is not influenced by any third party, other tourists reviews on the Trip Advisor website endorse our findings.
Family of 4 stayed 8 nights at Barnstaple hotel in 2 Signature rooms staying bed, breakfast and evening meal – Food was excellent and can’t fault the service or staff but that is where the praise ends.
On arrival the hotel looks more like a motel, adjacent to the busy main road into Barnstaple and positioned right next to the Industrial estate. Next door to the hotel is a Bowling alley and a Burger King, entrance to their busy car park and drive through is next to the hotel. 1 review states the Industrial estate offers food and entertainment thats OK if you want a burger! or a game of skittles and can't see that it is a problem. Why if the reviewer is a tourist should they state it isn't a problem.
Image shows how close rooms are to Industrial estate located behind the bushes.
On our first night at the hotel we were woken at 4am by workers at the fisheries company that backs onto the Barnstaple hotel (no mention of this on their web site or the fact they are next to an industrial estate).
Bright lights and noisy fork lift trucks whizzing around their yard loading/unloading lorries etc. This happened again at 6am on the Saturday morning, 1.53am on the Tuesday morning and 3am on Wednesday morning.
Bedroom view overlooking the Industrial estate
One of the family members fell in the bathroom on the Friday morning (our first full day at this hotel) due to extremely slippery tiles and a bathroom floor mat that provided little grip, falling onto their elbow, inflaming a pre exiting condition. The bathroom did not have enough ventilation and filled with steam that then condensed on the bathroom floor making it like an Ice Rink. The narrow window in the bathroom was long and opened at the bottom, this only gave a small opening at below waist height for the steam to escape.
We then reported this accident as we went down to breakfast that morning and a report was taken on hotel paper (a formal accident report was taken later that evening) at same time we reported the fact we were woken at 4am by the noise coming from industrial estate. We were advised by one of the ‘manager’s’ that they had taken legal action against this company and that they shouldn’t start work until 8am.
(we have since found out the legal action was for the smell not the noise)
He also informed us that if it were to happen again to call the night porter who would phone the fishery company and ask them to cease working if possible or reduce the noise level. We did this on the Tuesday morning as we were awoken again at 1.53am but the porter said sorry there is nothing he can do.
On our way to breakfast on the Tuesday morning we notified reception of our early ‘wake up call’, also at reception was the hotel manager to whom we notified our problems about the room and the fall in the bathroom, we got the obligatory sorry but little else. We were told maintenance would do a health and safety check on the room and file a report, which we asked for a copy of. We were notified that maintenance only looked at the bathroom and found condensation to be a possible problem. No report was done.
At no point on the Friday after the fall, the noise or the fact that the bathroom door didn’t shut properly was reported were we offered another room or a reason as to why one was not offered.
The bathroom door would not close, it was catching on the frame, and on the Tuesday 5 days after reporting it, maintenance repaired it, now it would pull too but the door would not close as maintenance failed to check it would close on the latch and the lock would work?
We were finally moved on the Wednesday morning after being woken again at 3am to a Pool room, thinking great we will finally get a good night’s sleep – how foolish to think this – moving from the outer side of the hotel to the inner was no better with a noisy generator/compressor which switches off at about 11pm and them restarts a 6am. By Friday morning we were pleased to be going home for a good night sleep.
If you do stay at the Barnstaple Hotel we would advise you DO NOT have an outer room, inner rooms can still be noisy but you do stand some chance of getting to sleep. We would suggest you check your room does not overlook the business park, which the hotel manager informed us has NO work time restrictions.
Personally we would recommend the food at the Barnstaple Hotel Brasserie restaurant, the service and staff excellent, however the ‘managers’ didn’t try to resolve the issues and each manager told a different story to gloss over the matter.
