Latest review:
Booked a 2 x night stay in one of the garden room at Harts for a family reunion in September. Booking process was all good, good comms and nice friendly staff on arrival.
In order to assist future guests to make an informed decision about the hotel, I have shared my personal experience and listed both the positive and the not so positive points of the hotel and my stay.
Good Points:
• Location is simply fantastic- just off the city centre, away from all the buses and bus slow, but literally a few minutes walk into the centre
• Lovely garden view, with amazing elevated views across the park
• Amazing water pressure in the bathrooms, filled the bath so quickly - probably the best I’ve ever experienced! Also made for a great shower in the mornings
• Massive bath, full length for a good long soak - brilliant
• Lovely large fluffy towels, smelled nice and fresh
• Individual controlled heating control. No air con, which would be an issue in the summer, but very effective heating control for the time of my stay
Not so great points:
• Noise from doors, the hotel is really showing its age and this is most noticeable with the fact that all the individual room doors make a heck of a noise when closed. No soft close here I’m afraid. Around 3:00 PM onwards, the noise is pretty much continuous. I counted on average 15 x noisy door slams for each half hour period. Approximately one every 2 x minutes or so, continuously! The noise did stop once everyone was in bed, but then sadly started again early 7:00am ish again the next morning. Such a shame, as otherwise the hotel is actually really lovely and quiet, which considering is city centre location is pretty amazing. Ending up seeing est plugs whilst I was ever in the room, to drown out the continuous thud- but could still hear the noise with ear high speciation silicone ear plugs on, rated to 30 decibels
• Noise from the cleaners, my room number 2 seemed to be where the cleaners congratulated in the mornings. They would literally sit on the floor outside my room, folding sheets and laundry stuff, whilst talking loudly and laughing - incredibly noisy and absolutely no chance of any sleep. The laundry cupboard was also located directly popper my room and it was constantly being opened and banging noises down the cleaners. From what I can gather garden rooms 1-4 will all be affected by this noise
• Very badly stained carpets in the room, not nice at all. Need a good clean at the very least and probably a few years past needing to be replaced in my opinion
• Old and chipped fixtures - very dated banged about fittings
• Unfortunately for purpose clear frosted glass panels on the bathroom sliding door, which meant that the whole room was flooded with light, despite having the curtains and blinds in the room closed. Completely useless and a fire example of the extremely poor design of the hotels
• No working extraction in the bathroom, resulting in lots of steam and unable to use the bathroom mirror
• Mould on the grout lines to the shower area, needs re grouting
• Tiny small room, couldn’t even do my yoga. Easily the smallest hotel room I have ever stayed in. Just about functional but far too small
• Awful motorway service station quality loo roll! No excuse on this one, come on guys an extra 50p a booking for proper loo roll!
In summary, great location hotel, but sadly the hotel is really showing its age now. Simply not acceptable at this price point, you would be better off and the Premier Inn across the road. There are many design floors and it is as if no thought event went into the design and everyday use of the hotel. I would suggest that the owner or one of the managers actually try and stay a night in the hotel and they will very quickly become fully aware of its many and significant short comings
I do hope that the hotel make some of the much needed improvements and address some of the issues, but alas for me, my stay really wasn’t a great experience and I would struggle to rate the hotel any higher than a disappointing 4 out of 10.
